Maximising Synergy among Tropical Plant Systematists, Ecologists, and Evolutionary Biologists

Closer collaboration among ecologists, systematists, and evolutionary biologists working in tropical forests, centred on studies within long-term permanent plots, would be highly beneficial for their respective fields. With a key unifying theme of the importance of vouchered collection and precise identification of species, especially rare ones, we identify four priority areas where improving links between these communities could achieve significant progress in biodiversity and conservation science: (i) increasing the pace of species discovery; (ii) documenting species turnover across space and time; (iii) improving models of ecosystem change; and (iv) understanding the evolutionary assembly of communities and biomes

Taxonomy based on science is necessary for global conservation

Peer reviewe

The global abundance of tree palms

Aim Palms are an iconic, diverse and often abundant component of tropical ecosystems that provide many ecosystem services. Being monocots, tree palms are evolutionarily, morphologically and physiologically distinct from other trees, and these differences have important consequences for ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration and storage) and in terms of responses to climate change. We quantified global patterns of tree palm relative abundance to help improve understanding of tropical forests and reduce uncertainty about these ecosystems under climate change. Location Tropical and subtropical moist forests. Time period Current. Major taxa studied Palms (Arecaceae). Methods We assembled a pantropical dataset of 2,548 forest plots (covering 1,191 ha) and quantified tree palm (i.e., ≥10 cm diameter at breast height) abundance relative to co‐occurring non‐palm trees. We compared the relative abundance of tree palms across biogeographical realms and tested for associations with palaeoclimate stability, current climate, edaphic conditions and metrics of forest structure. Results On average, the relative abundance of tree palms was more than five times larger between Neotropical locations and other biogeographical realms. Tree palms were absent in most locations outside the Neotropics but present in >80% of Neotropical locations. The relative abundance of tree palms was more strongly associated with local conditions (e.g., higher mean annual precipitation, lower soil fertility, shallower water table and lower plot mean wood density) than metrics of long‐term climate stability. Life‐form diversity also influenced the patterns; palm assemblages outside the Neotropics comprise many non‐tree (e.g., climbing) palms. Finally, we show that tree palms can influence estimates of above‐ground biomass, but the magnitude and direction of the effect require additional work. Conclusions Tree palms are not only quintessentially tropical, but they are also overwhelmingly Neotropical. Future work to understand the contributions of tree palms to biomass estimates and carbon cycling will be particularly crucial in Neotropical forests

To clean or not to clean: Cleaning open‐source data improves extinction risk assessments for threatened plant species

Plants are under‐represented in conservation efforts, with only 9% of described species published on the IUCN Red List. Biodiversity aggregators including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the more recent Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) contain a wealth of potentially useful occurrence data. We investigate the influence of these data in accelerating plant extinction risk assessments for 225 endemic, near‐endemic, and socioeconomic Bolivian plant species. Geo‐referenced herbarium voucher specimens verified by taxonomic experts comprised our control data set. Open‐source data for 77 species was subjected to a two‐stage cleaning protocol (using an automated R package followed by a manual clean) and threat categories were computed based on extent of occurrence thresholds. Accuracy was the highest using cleaned GBIF data (76%) and uncleaned BIEN data (79%). Sensitivity was the highest for cleaned GBIF (73%) and BIEN (80%) data suggesting our cleaning protocol was essential to maximize sensitivity rates. Comparisons between the control, GBIF and BIEN data sets revealed a paucity of occurrence data for 148 species (66%), 72% of which qualified for a threatened category. Balancing data quantity and accuracy must be considered when using open‐source data. Filling data gaps for threatened species is a conservation priority to improve the coverage of threatened species within biodiversity aggregators

An updated checklist of Araceae, Leguminosae and Myrtaceae of the department of Boyacá, Colombia, including keys to genera and new occurrence records.

Baseline checklists for the Leguminosae (Fabaceae), Araceae and Myrtaceae from the Colombian department of Boyacá are available from the Catalogue of Plants and Lichens of Colombia. These lists were supplemented by thorough herbarium and literature searches by a collaborative group of local and international experts, and further enhanced by local field collections. The result is authoritative taxonomic checklists for the three families including data regarding habit, plant uses and species conservation risk assessments for a subset of species. The checklists have notably increased the number of species reported from Boyacá and provide reliable, taxonomically up-to-date inventories for those families. Checklists are based on specimens vouchered in local herbaria and revised specimen metadata is lodged in the Colombian biological information platform CEIBA. The initiative demonstrates how relatively low levels of funding allow taxonomic experts working in networks to rapidly improve the taxonomic understanding of angiosperm species diversity in megadiverse countries like Colombia