• New Guinea has the world's richest islan

    From ScienceDaily@1337:3/111 to All on Wed Aug 5 21:30:38 2020
    New Guinea has the world's richest island flora

    Date:
    August 5, 2020
    Source:
    University of Zurich
    Summary:
    New Guinea is the most floristically diverse island in the world,
    an international collaboration has shown. The study presents a list
    of almost 14,000 plant species, compiled from online catalogues
    and verified by plant experts. The results are invaluable for
    research and conservation, and also underline the importance of
    expert knowledge in the digital era.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== Almost 20 times the size of Switzerland, New Guinea is the world's largest tropical island. It features a complex mosaic of ecosystems ? from lowland jungles to high-elevation grasslands with peaks higher than Mont Blanc.

    Botanists have long known that this mega-diverse wilderness area is
    home to a large number of plant species. Efforts to identify and name
    thousands of plants collected in New Guinea and archived in herbaria
    all over the world have been ongoing since the 17th century.


    ========================================================================== However, since researchers have worked mostly independently from
    each other, a great uncertainty remains as to the exact number
    of plant species, with conflicting estimates ranging from 9,000 to
    25,000. "Compared to other areas like Amazonia, for which plant checklists
    were recently published, New Guinea remained the 'Last Unknown'," says
    Rodrigo Ca'mara-Leret, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Prof. Jordi Bascompte in the UZH Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies. Under his lead, 99 scientists from 56 institutions and 19
    countries have now built the first expert-verified checklist for the
    13,634 vascular plant species of New Guinea and its surrounding islands.

    Merging databases and human knowledge The researchers began their
    large-scale collaborative effort by compiling a list of plant names
    from online catalogues, institutional repositories and datasets curated
    by taxonomists. After standardizing the scientific names, 99 experts
    on New Guinea flora checked almost 25,000 species names derived from
    over 700,000 individual specimens. For this, they reviewed the list of
    original names in their plant family of expertise and assessed whether
    these names were correctly assigned in the online platforms. Finally,
    an independent comparison was performed between the list accepted by
    experts and a list contained in Plants of the World Online for New Guinea.

    Tremendous, mostly endemic plant diversity The resulting checklist
    contains 13,634 plants, demonstrating that New Guinea has the world's
    richest island flora ? with about 20% more species than Madagascar or
    Borneo. By far the most species-rich family are the orchids and almost
    a third of the species are trees. One particularly remarkable finding
    is that 68% of the plants are endemic ? they are only found in the
    region. "Such high endemic species richness is unmatched in tropical
    Asia," says Ca'mara- Leret, "It means that Indonesia and Papua New
    Guinea, the two states into which the island is divided, have a unique responsibility for the survival of this irreplaceable biodiversity."
    Foundation for research and protection The new authoritative checklist
    will improve the accuracy of biogeographic and ecological studies,
    help focus DNA sequencing on species-rich groups with high endemism,
    and facilitate the discovery of more species by taxonomists.

    Thousands of specimens remain unidentified in the collections and many
    unknown species have yet to be discovered in the wild. "We estimate that
    in the next 50 years, 3,000 to 4,000 species will be added," says Michael Kessler, co-author of the study and scientific curator of the Botanical
    Garden of the University of Zurich. These efforts will be important for conservation planning and modelling the impact of changes in climate
    and land use.

    The collaboration also underscores that expert knowledge is still
    essential in the digital era ? reliance on online platforms alone would
    have erroneously inflated species counts by one fifth. However, many
    of the New Guinea plants experts are already or soon to be retired,
    and almost half of them are non- residents. The researchers therefore
    advocate building a critical mass of resident plant taxonomists.

    Policy-wise, the study shows that long-term institutional and financial
    support is critical if significant advances are to be made over the
    next decades. "Our work demonstrates that international collaborative
    efforts using verified digital data can rapidly synthesize biodiversity information. This can serve as a model for accelerating research in
    other hyper-diverse areas such as Borneo," says Ca'mara-Leret. "Such initiatives pave the way for the grand challenge of conserving the
    richest island flora of the world."

    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Zurich. Note: Content
    may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Rodrigo Ca'mara-Leret, David G. Frodin, Frits Adema, Christiane
    Anderson,
    Marc S. Appelhans, George Argent, Susana Arias Guerrero, Peter
    Ashton, William J. Baker, Anders S. Barfod, David Barrington,
    Renata Borosova, Gemma L. C. Bramley, Marie Briggs, Sven Buerki,
    Daniel Cahen, Martin W.

    Callmander, Martin Cheek, Cheng-Wei Chen, Barry J. Conn, Mark J. E.

    Coode, Iain Darbyshire, Sally Dawson, John Dransfield, Clare
    Drinkell, Brigitta Duyfjes, Atsushi Ebihara, Zacky Ezedin,
    Long-Fei Fu, Osia Gideon, Deden Girmansyah, Rafae"l Govaerts,
    Helen Fortune-Hopkins, Gustavo Hassemer, Alistair Hay, Charlie
    D. Heatubun, D. J. Nicholas Hind, Peter Hoch, Peter Homot, Peter
    Hovenkamp, Mark Hughes, Matthew Jebb, Laura Jennings, Tiberius
    Jimbo, Michael Kessler, Ruth Kiew, Sandra Knapp, Penniel Lamei,
    Marcus Lehnert, Gwilym P. Lewis, Hans Peter Linder, Stuart
    Lindsay, Yee Wen Low, Eve Lucas, Jeffrey P. Mancera, Alexandre
    K. Monro, Alison Moore, David J. Middleton, Hidetoshi Nagamasu,
    Mark F. Newman, Eimear Nic Lughadha, Pablo H. A. Melo, Daniel
    J. Ohlsen, Caroline M.

    Pannell, Barbara Parris, Laura Pearce, Darin S. Penneys, Leon
    R. Perrie, Peter Petoe, Axel Dalberg Poulsen, Ghillean T. Prance,
    J. Peter Quakenbush, Niels Raes, Michele Rodda, Zachary S. Rogers,
    Andre' Schuiteman, Pedro Schwartsburd, Robert W. Scotland, Mark
    P. Simmons, David A. Simpson, Peter Stevens, Michael Sundue,
    Weston Testo, Anna Trias-Blasi, Ian Turner, Timothy Utteridge,
    Lesley Walsingham, Bruce L.

    Webber, Ran Wei, George D. Weiblen, Maximilian Weigend, Peter
    Weston, Willem de Wilde, Peter Wilkie, Christine M. Wilmot-Dear,
    Hannah P.

    Wilson, John R. I. Wood, Li-Bing Zhang, Peter C. van Welzen. New
    Guinea has the world's richest island flora. Nature, 2020; DOI:
    10.1038/s41586- 020-2549-5 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200805124056.htm

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