What would current ecosystems be like without the impact of mankind? This question, which is critical for ecosystem management, has long remained unanswered due to a lack of present-day data from truly undisturbed ecosystems. Using mountaineering techniques, we accessed pristine relict ecosystems in the Peruvian Andes to provide this baseline data and compared it with the surrounding accessible and disturbed landscape. We show that natural ecosystems and human impact in the high Andes are radically different from preconceived ideas. Vegetation of these ‘lost worlds’ was dominated by plant species previously unknown to science that have become extinct in nearby human-affected ecosystems. Furthermore, natural vegetation had greater plant biomass with potentially as much as ten times more forest, but lower plant diversity. Contrary to our expectations, soils showed relatively little degradation when compared within a vegetation type, but differed mainly between forest and grassland ecosystems. At the landscape level, a presumed large-scale forest reduction resulted in a nowadays more acidic soilscape with higher carbon storage, partly ameliorating carbon loss through deforestation. Human impact in the high Andes, thus, had mixed effects on biodiversity, while soils and carbon stocks would have been mainly indirectly affected through a suggested large-scale vegetation change.

Flourensia (Asteraceae, Heliantheae, Enceliinae) is an amphitropical genus of resinous subshrubs, shrubs and small trees with 13 North American and 20 South American species among which disagreement on the species limits of some members still exists. To resolve the taxonomy of the South American taxa, we carried out a combination of clustering (Ward's method with Gower distance coefficient) and ordination analyses (Principal Coordinate Analyses) based on 34 vegetative and reproductive characters scored from herbarium material, including types. Based on the results, we recognize 12 South American species: F. angustifolia, F. cajabambensis, F. fiebrigii, F. heterolepis, F. hirtissima, F. macrophylla, F. niederleinii; F. peruviana, F. polycephala, F. thurifera, F. tortuosa and F. suffrutescens. A number of species are placed in synonymy: Flourensia blakeana and F. hirta are synonymized under the name F. fiebrigii; Flourensia campestris, F. leptopoda, F. oolepis and F. riparia are synonymized under F. thurifera; Flourensia macroligulata is synonymized under F. tortuosa, and Flourensia polyclada is synonymized under F. suffrutescens. A taxonomic treatment of four redefined species as well as a key and distribution maps to all South American Flourensia species are provided.

Abstract—A new species, Serpocaulon australe, from the Yungas Montane Forest of Argentina and Bolivia, is described based on a re-interpretation of the name S. gilliesii. The new species is similar to S. lasiopus, but can be distinguished by its rhizome scales with entire margins and acute-acuminate apices, glabrous fronds with few axillary scales in the segments, sori absent in the apex of the segments, and ascending segments. We investigated the taxonomic relationships among these similar species of Serpocaulon using morphoanatomical characters of the sporophyte and ecological preferences. Morphometric analyses, clustering, and principal coordinate analyses (PCoA), were used to scrutinize the forming of hierarchical non-overlapping groups strictly according to degree of morphological similarity. Twenty-four characters were scored for 65 specimens from herbaria (including type material) and for new collections from our fieldwork. We discuss the taxonomic status of S. gilliesii and S. lasiopus and present nomenclature notes for S. gilliesii. Also, some misidentified herbaria collections have led to the discovery of a Serpocaulon species (S. lasiopus), a new record for the Argentinian flora. Finally, a revised key to the pinnatisect species of Serpocaulon in Argentina is provided.