Phylogenetic Diversity of Urban Floras in the Central Urals

Modern cities harbor a high diversity of plants, and urban floras are significantly different from non-urban floras especially when considering the proportion of alien species found in cities. However, it is not clear whether urban areas disproportionately select for species from relatively few evolutionary lineages or provide opportunities for species across the full spectrum of plant lineages. Here, we examined the taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity of the floras in four cities (Yekaterinburg, Kamensk-Uralsky, Krasnoufimsk, and Turinsk) in the understudied region of Central Urals (Russian Federation). We classified native species into indigenous and apophytic species, namely, those that are sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance and those that have expanded their range with human activity, respectively. Alien species were classified into archaeophytes and neophytes according to when they were introduced (i.e., before or after than 1800). Phylogenetic diversity was quantified using Faith’s index to reflect total evolutionary history in urban areas and mean phylogenetic distance (MPD) to reflect species dissimilarity. Phylogenetic diversity of native species was higher than that for alien species, and the standardized effect size (SES) of MPD for natives was positive, reflecting their general dissimilarity from one another, while it was very negative for aliens, showing that they were phylogenetically clustered. However, among natives, apophytes were significantly clustered, while indigenous species were overdispersed. For the aliens, MPD was higher for archaeophytes compared to neophytes, though both groups were significantly clustered. These results show that urbanization leads to a non-random selection of plants. Apophytes and alien plants were composed of closely related species, reflecting similar ecological traits and are likely to be pre-adapted to the environmentally altered and highly disturbed urban environment. © Copyright © 2021 Tretyakova, Yakimov, Kondratkov, Grudanov and Cadotte.Funding for this collaboration was provided to MC by the Connaught Global Challenges Award, the Office of the Vice-President International, the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, the Office of the Vice-Principal Research at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (#386151). This work was supported in part by the Program for Improving the Competitiveness of the Ural Federal University (the decree no. 211 of the Government of the Russian Federation, contract no. 02.A03.21.0006) and by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project no. 19-04-01084)

A Database of Weed Plants in the European Part of Russia

Weeds are plants that, although not specially cultivated, grow and often adapt to growing in arable lands. They form an ecological variant of flora, as a historically-formed set of species growing on cultivated soils. For the rational use of the chemical and biological crop protection products and to produce safe and high-quality food, up-to-date data on the floristic diversity of weeds and the patterns of its geographical change are required. The need for a weeds' database arises that allows many specialists to work together independently. However, the great value of any database lies not in its existence, but in the accumulation of data that can be used to analyse the factors affecting the species diversity of weeds. New information A dataset of weed species diversity and their distribution in the European part of Russia, based on the results of the authors' own research from 1999 to 2019, has been created. The dataset includes 24,284 observations of occurrences of weed plants, which were obtained on the basis of 2,049 relevés of segetal plant communities in seven regions of the European part of Russia. In total, the dataset includes information about 329 species of vascular plants growing in 65 farmlands: cereals, spring and winter crops, industrial crops, row crops and perennial grasses (Tretyakova et al. 2020). © Tretyakova A et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Funding: This work was supported by Russian public funds (AAAA-A18-118011990151-7) in the framework of implementation of the State task on the “Vascular plants of Eurasia: taxonomy, ora, plant resources” (AAAA-A19-119031290052-1), by the Competitiveness of the Ural Federal University (Russian Federation Government Regulation no. 211, contract no. 02. A03.21.0006) and partially by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project nos. 17-44-020402 and 19-016-00135)

Сегетальная флора некоторых регионов России: характеристика таксономической структуры

The authors' data on the weed species composition in 8 geographic regions of the Russian Federation were laid at the basis of this survey. The segetal flora comprised weeds of cereals, root crops, and perennial grasses. The composition and taxonomic structure of weed species were analyzed. The total number of weedy plants encompassed 686 plant species. The level of regional weed species diversity was positively related to the area planted. Altai Territory, Udmurtia, and Rostov Province had the greatest weed species diversity, with more than 300 species, while Vologda Province had the lowest diversity (193 species). Most species-rich plant families (Asteraceae Dumort., Poaceae Barnhart, Fabaceae Lindl., Brassicaceae Burnet), genera (Potentila L., Artemisia L., Veronica L., Chenopodium L., Silene L., Trifolium L.), their subsequences, contributions of single-species families (17-39%) and genera (57-74%) were relatively stable systematic structure indicators. Only 18% of the species were common for all the regions. In each region there were region-specific groups of species. Weed species compositions in geographically close regions - the European part of Russia and the Urals - showed the greatest similarity. As for geographically distant regions (Altai Territory and Rostov Province), their weedy species compositions were distant and contained large groups of region-specific species. © 2020 All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources -Federal Research Center. All rights reserved.This work was supported in part by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (projects 17-44-020402 р_а, 19-016-00135), state budget funds (AAAA-A18-118011990151-7), and as part of the implementation of the state task on the topic: “Vascular plants of Eurasia: taxonomy, flora, plant resources” (AAAA-A19-119031290052-1)

Pteridophyte Distribution of the Urals and Adjacent Areas: a Dataset

Background Data on the species diversity and distribution of pteridophytes (lycophytes and ferns) in the Urals and adjacent areas are presented. The dataset includes 13,742 observations of two classes Lycopodiopsida and Polypodiopsida. In total, the dataset contains information on 16 families, 28 generas, 65 species, four subspecies and nine interspecies hybrids. All records are for lycophytes and ferns collected over 170 years between 1853 and 2021. The dataset presented is based on herbarium specimens, published data and field research conducted by the authors. This dataset is the first and important step towards generalising information on the current diversity and geographical distribution of pteridophytes in the Urals and adjacent areas. © Melnikov D et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Funding: This work was supported in part by the Program for Improving the Competitiveness of the Ural Federal University (the decree no. 211 of the Government of the Russian Federation, contract No. 02.A03.21.0006), the state assignments АААА-А19-119031290052-1 (Komarov Botanical Institute RAS), no. 0111-2019-0001 (Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden of the RAS), no. AAAA-A17-117072810011-1 (Institute Botanical Garden UB RAS) and no. АААА-А19-119031890084-6 (Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology UB RAS). This research was carried out within the project No. 121041600045-8 "Western Siberia in the context of Eurasian ties: man, nature, society". We thank the Ministry of Higher Education and Science of Russian Federation for the supportgiven to the Center of Collective Use “Herbarium MBG RAS” (Agreement No. 075-15-2021-678). The work was carried out as part of the Russia 2021 project

HISTORY АND CURRENT STATE ОF HERBARIUM ОF THE NIZHNIY TAGIL STATE SOCIAL АND PEDAGOGICAL INSTITUTE

The article introduces the reader to the history of formation and modern problems of herbarium of Nizhny Tagil State Social and Pedagogical Institute. The paper describes the history of the herbarium collection and the stages of its formation. The article names and briefly describes the scientists who participated in the creation and filling of the herbarium, as well as quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the collection. The reasons for which the herbarium should be included in the system of herbariums of Russia and the problems preventing it are specified