No abstract

We have analysed the global patterns of moss species diversity based on a dataset created from checklists, online databases, and herbarium records. We collected more than 100 000 distribution records for over 400 different geographical units and standardized species taxonomy using the TROPICOS database of the Missouri Botanical Garden. Maps of overall moss species richness, as well as individual maps for taxonomic orders of mosses, are provided. Based on our dataset, we did not find a general latitudinal gradient of increasing moss diversity with decreasing latitude. Several areas of temperate broadleaf forests, boreal forests, and tundra show relatively high species richness that is comparable to tropical regions. Centres of moss diversity include the northern Andes, Southeast Asia, Mexico, and Japan, as well as the Himalayan region, Madagascar, the East African Highlands, central Europe, Scandinavia, and British Columbia. Our dataset presents the first collection of moss species inventories with global coverage. It contributes to documentation and understanding of global biogeographic patterns in mosses, helps to identify gaps in floristic knowledge, and could prove to be a valuable resource to aid taxonomic and systematic revisions or assessments of species and genera, by quickly and easily supplying an overview of the geographic distribution of a given taxon.

Article impact statement: Questions regarding freshwater ecosystem conservation, role of social structure in human-environment interactions, and impacts of conservation need more attention. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.[3] AbstractIn 2008, a group of conservation scientists compiled a list of 100 priority questions for the conservation of the world's biodiversity [Sutherland et al. (2009) Conservation Biology, 23, 557-567]. However, now almost a decade later, no one has yet published a study gauging how much progress has been made in addressing these 100 high-priority questions in the peer-reviewed literature. Here we take a first step toward re-examining the 100 questions and identify key knowledge gaps that still remain. Through a combination of a questionnaire and a literature review, we evaluated each of the 100 questions on the basis of two criteria: relevance and effort. We defined highly-relevant questions as those which -if answered -would have the greatest impact on global biodiversity conservation, while effort was quantified based on the number of review publications addressing a particular question, which we used as a proxy for research effort. Using this approach we identified a set of questions that, despite being perceived as highly relevant, have been the focus of relatively few review publications over the past ten years. These questions covered a broad range of topics but predominantly tackled three major themes: the conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems, the role of societal structures in shaping interactions between people and the environment, and the impacts of conservation interventions. We see these questions as important knowledge gaps that have so far received insufficient attention and may need to be prioritised in future research. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.[4]