A Preliminary Evaluation of The Karst Flora of Brazil Using Collections Data

Abstract

Karst is defined as landscapes that are underlain by soluble rock in which there is appreciable water movement arising from a combination of high rock solubility and well-developed secondary (fracture) porosity. Karsts occupy approximately 20% of the planet’s dry ice-free land and are of great socioeconomic importance, as they supply water to up to 25% of the world’s population and represent landscapes of cultural and touristic importance. In Southeast Asia karst is associated with high species-richness and endemism in plants and seen as priority areas for the conservation of biodiversity. There has been little research into the floras associated with karst in South America, most of which occurs in Brazil. We therefore sought to evaluate the importance of Brazilian karst with respect to its species-richness and endemism. We sought to do so using curated plant specimen data in the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) dataset. We show that, except for Amazonia, the BIEN dataset is representative of the Brazilian flora with respect to the total number of species and overall patterns of species richness. We found that karst is under-sampled, as is the case for much of Brazil. We also found that whilst karst represent an important source of plant diversity for Brazil, including populations of approximately 1/3 of the Brazilian flora, it is not significantly more species-rich or richer in small-range and endemic species than surrounding landscapes. Similarly, whilst important for conservation, comprising populations of 26.5–37.4% of all Brazilian species evaluated as of conservation concern by International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN), karst is no more so than the surrounding areas. Whilst experimental error, including map resolution and the precision and accuracy of point data may have under-estimated the species-richness of Brazilian karst, it likely represents an important biodiversity resource for Brazil and one that can play a valuable role in conservation. Our findings are in sharp contrast to those for Southeast Asia where karst represents a more important source of species-richness and endemism. We also show that although BIEN represents a comprehensive and curated source of point data, discrepancies in the application of names compared to current more comprehensive taxonomic backbones, can have profound impacts on estimates of species-richness, distribution ranges and estimates of endemism.

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

“…There is yet to be an automated method to detect identification errors within occurrence data due to the complex science of plant names (Thomson et al, 2018) therefore manual checks are still required. Bystriakova, De Melo, Moat, Nic Lughadha, and Monro (2019) report incongruences between taxonomies when using BIEN data, with some species being treated as multiple different species which may result in inaccurate extinction risk assessments. Species with disjunct distributions or introduced populations pose further complications for automated methods and are difficult to detect but are vital for accurate extinction risk assessments.…”

Sugarloaf Land in south-eastern Brazil: a tropical hotspot of lowland inselberg plant diversity

“…Highland inselbergs were not considered in the present study, nor were transitional areas where most inselbergs are located above 1000 m a.s.l., but not considered campos de altitude, such as Pedra Azul, Forno Grande, Alto Misterioso (Espírito Santo State) and Pico da Caledônia (Rio de Janeiro State). We also excluded rocky shores (costões rochosos), inselbergs located in domains other than the Atlantic Forest biome and other types of rock outcrops, such as campos rupestres (sensu Silveira et al 2016), karstic outcrops (sensu Bystriakova et al 2019) and cangas (sensu Carmo et al 2018).…”

Living in the dark: Bat caves as hotspots of fungal diversity

“…Cave biota are frequently identified as being highly diverse and specialised (e.g. troglobiont, eutroglophile, subtroglophile, and trogloxene) [6,7], and are known to show extreme endemism; a myriad of unknown species are often discovered [8][9][10]. This is also true for fungi.…”