An overview of the Lejeuneaceae in Australia

As currently understood, the Lejeuneaceae flora of Australia consists of 122 species in 27 genera. The family occurs almost exclusively in rainforested areas along the eastern coast of the continent. Based on species composition, three floristic regions are recognized: tropical, subtropical and temperate. The tropical region contains 80 percent of the total number of Lejeuneaceae found in Australia, the subtropical region contains 45 percent, and the temperate region only 15 percent of the total flora. The affinities of the Lejeuneaceae in the tropical and subtropical regions are strongest with the Asian flora, and those of the temperate region are strongest with the New Zealand flora. The diversity of the Lejeuneaceae flora in Australia is higher than might be expected for a non-equatorial region. This diversity may result from the wide variety of rainforest habitats that are available along both latitudinal and altitudinal gradients. The temperate flora is probably derived from that which existed in Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and probably southern South America prior to the breakup of Gondwanaland. The modern tropical flora is probably a mixture of species that were part of the original northern Gondwanan flora and those that have invaded more recently

A re-evaluation of Cheilolejeunea subgenus Xenolejeunea

Cheilolejeunea subgenus Xenolejeunea Kachroo & Schust. is emended to account for variability observed in stem anatomy and lobule structure. Cheilolejeunea subgenus Tegulilejeunea Schust. is reduced to synonymy with subgenus Xenolejeunea. A new sectional classification of subgenus Xenolejeunea is proposed (sections Gigantae, Meyenianae, and Xenolejeunea). A key distinguishes among the sections and the 10 species accepted in the subgenus, which is known from Australasia, Oceania and tropical Asia. A nomenclator and discussion is provided for each species. Comments on excluded species conclude the treatment

The bien r package: A tool to access the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) database

There is an urgent need for largeâ scale botanical data to improve our understanding of community assembly, coexistence, biogeography, evolution, and many other fundamental biological processes. Understanding these processes is critical for predicting and handling humanâ biodiversity interactions and global change dynamics such as food and energy security, ecosystem services, climate change, and species invasions.The Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) database comprises an unprecedented wealth of cleaned and standardised botanical data, containing roughly 81 million occurrence records from c. 375,000 species, c. 915,000 trait observations across 28 traits from c. 93,000 species, and coâ occurrence records from 110,000 ecological plots globally, as well as 100,000 range maps and 100 replicated phylogenies (each containing 81,274 species) for New World species. Here, we describe an r package that provides easy access to these data.The bien r package allows users to access the multiple types of data in the BIEN database. Functions in this package query the BIEN database by turning user inputs into optimised PostgreSQL functions. Function names follow a convention designed to make it easy to understand what each function does. We have also developed a protocol for providing customised citations and herbarium acknowledgements for data downloaded through the bien r package.The development of the BIEN database represents a significant achievement in biological data integration, cleaning and standardization. Likewise, the bien r package represents an important tool for open science that makes the BIEN database freely and easily accessible to everyone.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142458/1/mee312861_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142458/2/mee312861.pd

World checklist of hornworts and liverworts

A working checklist of accepted taxa worldwide is vital in achieving the goal of developing an online flora of all known plants by 2020 as part of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. We here present the first-ever worldwide checklist for liverworts (Marchantiophyta) and hornworts (Anthocerotophyta) that includes 7486 species in 398 genera representing 92 families from the two phyla. The checklist has far reaching implications and applications, including providing a valuable tool for taxonomists and systematists, analyzing phytogeographic and diversity patterns, aiding in the assessment of floristic and taxonomic knowledge, and identifying geographical gaps in our understanding of the global liverwort and hornwort flora. The checklist is derived from a working data set centralizing nomenclature, taxonomy and geography on a global scale. Prior to this effort a lack of centralization has been a major impediment for the study and analysis of species richness, conservation and systematic research at both regional and global scales. The success of this checklist, initiated in 2008, has been underpinned by its community approach involving taxonomic specialists working towards a consensus on taxonomy, nomenclature and distribution

Habitat area and climate stability determine geographical variation in plant species range sizes

Despite being a fundamental aspect of biodiversity, little is known about what controls species range sizes. This is especially the case for hyperdiverse organisms such as plants. We use the largest botanical data set assembled to date to quantify geographical variation in range size for ∼ 85 000 plant species across the New World. We assess prominent hypothesised range-size controls, finding that plant range sizes are codetermined by habitat area and long- and short-term climate stability. Strong short- and long-term climate instability in large parts of North America, including past glaciations, are associated with broad-ranged species. In contrast, small habitat areas and a stable climate characterise areas with high concentrations of small-ranged species in the Andes, Central America and the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest region. The joint roles of area and climate stability strengthen concerns over the potential effects of future climate change and habitat loss on biodiversity

Extending U.S. Biodiversity Collections to Address National Challenges

Part of SPNHC 2019 | https://osf.io/view/SPNHC201

Using Data From Index Herbariorum to Assess Threats to the World’s Herbaria

During the past few years, natural disasters, political or social unrest and institutional actions have imperiled herbaria. The question has been raised multiple times whether or not the data gathered about herbaria in Index Herbariorum could be used to predict which herbaria are at the greatest risk. Armed with such knowledge curators and the greater collections community might be in a better position to safeguard those herbaria. To explore the feasibility of using Index Herbariorum data in this way, we have identified a set of specific threats and then scored herbaria according to their susceptibility to those threats. These threats fall into two categories: Physical and Administrative. Physical threats are those that could lead to loss of collections through outright destruction due to catastrophic events (e.g., earthquake, flood) or loss of the protective controls (e.g., air conditioning, building security) that ensure a safe collections environment. Determination of these threats is based on location. Administrative threats involve decisions made by the governing body to remove staff support, appropriate space or climate control measures for the collection. Physical threats were determined using GIS to plot the location of all herbaria, and then overlaying these with map layers indicating current earthquakes, floods, cyclones and landslides and potential future threats (sea level rise and civil unrest). We deduced Administrative threats from Index Herbariorum data elements. These include the status of the herbarium (active or inactive), whether or not the Index Herbariorum entry for an institution has been updated in the past 10 years, whether or not the herbarium has a designated curator, the ratio of staff to specimens, and whether or not the collection has been digitized. Each threat was assessed as absent or present, and assigned a value of 0 or 1 accordingly. Using this method, less than 4% face no identified threats; 65% face one to three threats and 35% face five or more threats. The criteria used in this study cannot alone predict the future security of a collection, or the lack thereof. The reasons for the loss of a collection are usually more complicated than Index Herbariorum data can convey. However, the large proportion of herbaria that face multiple threats suggests that all herbaria should be aware of the risk factors for their collection, perhaps conducting a self-evaluation using the criteria presented here or others, and where possible should incorporate responses to those threats into their strategic and disaster preparedness plans

Extending U.S. Biodiversity Collections to Address National Challenges

The U.S. national heritage of approximately one billion biodiversity specimens, once digitized, can be linked to emerging digital data sources to form an information-rich network for exploring earth’s biota across taxonomic, temporal and spatial scales.  A workshop held 30 October - 1 November 2018 at Oak Spring Garden in Upperville, VA under the leadership of the Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN) developed a plan for maximizing the value of our collections resource for research and education. In their deliberations, participants drew heavily on recent literature as well as surveys, and meetings and workshops held over the past year with the primary stakeholder community of collections professionals, researchers, and educators. We propose to focus future biodiversity infrastructure and digital resources on building a network of extended specimen data that encompasses the depth and breadth of biodiversity specimens and data held in U.S. collections institutions (BCoN 2019). The extended specimen network (ESN) includes the physical voucher specimen curated and housed in a collection and its associated genetic, phenotypic and environmental data. These core data types, selected because they are key to answering driving research questions, include physical preparations such as tissue samples and their derivative products such as gene sequences or metagenomes, digitized media and annotations, and taxon- or locality-specific data such as occurrence observations, phylogenies and species distributions. Existing voucher specimens will be extended both manually and through new automated methods, and data will be linked through unique identifiers, taxon name and location across collections, across disciplines and to outside sources of data.  As we continue our documentation of earth’s biota, new collections will be enhanced from the outset, i.e., accessioned with a full suite of data. We envision the ESN proposed here will be the gold standard for the structured cloud of integrated data associated with all vouchered specimens. Collectively, data linked through the ESN will enhance the capacity to explore research questions across taxonomic, temporal and spatial scales. The ESN will allow researchers to explore the rules that govern how organisms, grow, diversify and interact, and enable scientists to ask more nuanced research questions specific to how environmental change and human activities may affect those rules. The specimen, coupled with the open access ESN, and immediate and relevant science resulting from the ESN, can play a unique role in promoting STEM education, involving citizen scientists, and empowering a scientifically literate society. The specimen and the associated data provide a relatable and engaging entry point to participate in iterative data driven science, learn core data literacy skills, and build open, transdisciplinary collaboration. Creating the ESN requires new infrastructure to provide the linkages between the specimen and data derived from it. On the established foundation of existing digital data from collections it will require the development of new standards, connections, and resources such as ontologies to facilitate discovery, and implementation of a robust identifier tracking system. Finally, continued digitization of established, as well as new collections, is necessary to ensure the grounding of extended specimen data in the framework of when and where it was collected. The ESN will also require new approaches to data sharing and collaboration, partnerships with national and international data providers, computer and data scientists, educators and industry.  The ESN will benefit from research-driven episodic funding for the collection of new specimens, which in turn will require digitization and curation. For the ESN to function as envisaged above, it will require long-term support for a central organizing unit with responsibility for community coordination, education and outreach, data mobilization, and maintenance of the central data repository and the network infrastructure