It is clear that the majority of fl owering plants are pollinated by insects and other animals, with a minority utilising abiotic pollen vectors, mainly wind. However there is no accurate published calculation of the proportion of the ca 352 000 species of angiosperms that interact with pollinators. Widely cited fi gures range from 67% to 96% but these have not been based on fi rm data. We estimated the number and proportion of fl owering plants that are pollinated by animals using published and unpublished community-level surveys of plant pollination systems that recorded whether each species present was pollinated by animals or wind. Th e proportion of animal-pollinated species rises from a mean of 78% in temperate-zone communities to 94% in tropical communities. By correcting for the latitudinal diversity trend in fl owering plants, we estimate the global number and proportion of animal pollinated angiosperms as 308 006, which is 87.5% of the estimated species-level diversity of fl owering plants. Given current concerns about the decline in pollinators and the possible resulting impacts on both natural communities and agricultural crops, such estimates are vital to both ecologists and policy makers. Further research is required to assess in detail the absolute dependency of these plants on their pollinators, and how this varies with latitude and community type, but there is no doubt that plant – pollinator interactions play a signifi cant role in maintaining the functional integrity of most terrestrial ecosystems. Plant – pollinator relationships may be one of the most ecologically important classes of animal – plant interaction: without pollinators, many plants could not set seed and reproduce; and without plants to provide pollen, nectar and other rewards, many animal populations would decline, with consequent knock-on eff ects for other species (Kearns et al.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1600-0706.2010.18644.x

How many flowering plants are pollinated by animals

GeoCAT is an open source, browser based tool that performs rapid geospatial analysis to ease the process of Red Listing taxa. Developed to utilise spatially referenced primary occurrence data, the analysis focuses on two aspects of the geographic range of a taxon: the extent of occurrence (EOO) and the area of occupancy (AOO). These metrics form part of the IUCN Red List categories and criteria and have often proved challenging to obtain in an accurate, consistent and repeatable way. Within a familiar Google Maps environment, GeoCAT users can quickly and easily combine data from multiple sources such as GBIF, Flickr and Scratchpads as well as user generated occurrence data. Analysis is done with the click of a button and is visualised instantly, providing an indication of the Red List threat rating, subject to meeting the full requirements of the criteria. Outputs including the results, data and parameters used for analysis are stored in a GeoCAT file that can be easily reloaded or shared with collaborators. GeoCAT is a first step toward automating the data handling process of Red List assessing and provides a valuable hub from which further developments and enhancements can be spawned.

https://zookeys.pensoft.net/lib/ajax_srv/article_elements_srv.php?action=download_pdf&item_id=3037

Supporting Red List threat assessments with GeoCAT: geospatial conservation assessment tool

Early flowering plants are thought to have been woody species restricted to warm habitats 1–3 . This lineage has since radiated into almost every climate, with manifold growth forms 4 . As angiosperms spread and climate changed, they evolved mechanisms to cope with episodic freezing. To explore the evolution of traits underpinning the ability to persist in freezing conditions, we assembled a large species-level database of growth habit (woody or herbaceous; 49,064 species), as well as leaf phenology (evergreen or deciduous), diameter of hydraulic conduits (that is, xylem vessels and tracheids) and climate occupancies (exposure to freezing). To model the evolution of species’ traits and climate occupancies, we combined these data with an unparalleled dated molecular phylogeny (32,223 species) for land plants. Here we show that woody clades successfully move di nto freezingprone environments by either possessing transport networks of small

/pdf/three-keys-to-the-radiation-of-angiosperms-into-freezing-19a7okg0a6.pdf

Three keys to the radiation of angiosperms into freezing environments

Premise of the study Fungi are major decomposers in certain ecosystems and essential associates of many organisms. They provide enzymes and drugs and serve as experimental organisms. In 1991, a landmark paper estimated that there are 1.5 million fungi on the Earth. Because only 70000 fungi had been described at that time, the estimate has been the impetus to search for previously unknown fungi. Fungal habitats include soil, water, and organisms that may harbor large numbers of understudied fungi, estimated to outnumber plants by at least 6 to 1. More recent estimates based on high-throughput sequencing methods suggest that as many as 5.1 million fungal species exist. Methods Technological advances make it possible to apply molecular methods to develop a stable classification and to discover and identify fungal taxa. Key results Molecular methods have dramatically increased our knowledge of Fungi in less than 20 years, revealing a monophyletic kingdom and increased diversity among early-diverging lineages. Mycologists are making significant advances in species discovery, but many fungi remain to be discovered. Conclusions Fungi are essential to the survival of many groups of organisms with which they form associations. They also attract attention as predators of invertebrate animals, pathogens of potatoes and rice and humans and bats, killers of frogs and crayfish, producers of secondary metabolites to lower cholesterol, and subjects of prize-winning research. Molecular tools in use and under development can be used to discover the world's unknown fungi in less than 1000 years predicted at current new species acquisition rates.

The Fungi: 1, 2, 3 … 5.1 million species?

Endemism and species richness are highly relevant to the global prioritization of conservation efforts in which oceanic islands have remained relatively neglected. When compared to mainland areas, oceanic islands in general are known for their high percentage of endemic species but only moderate levels of species richness, prompting the question of their relative conservation value. Here we quantify geographic patterns of endemism-scaled richness (“endemism richness”) of vascular plants across 90 terrestrial biogeographic regions, including islands, worldwide and evaluate their congruence with terrestrial vertebrates. Endemism richness of plants and vertebrates is strongly related, and values on islands exceed those of mainland regions by a factor of 9.5 and 8.1 for plants and vertebrates, respectively. Comparisons of different measures of past and future human impact and land cover change further reveal marked differences between mainland and island regions. While island and mainland regions suffered equally from past habitat loss, we find the human impact index, a measure of current threat, to be significantly higher on islands. Projected land-cover changes for the year 2100 indicate that land-use-driven changes on islands might strongly increase in the future. Given their conservation risks, smaller land areas, and high levels of endemism richness, islands may offer particularly high returns for species conservation efforts and therefore warrant a high priority in global biodiversity conservation in this century.

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/23/9322.full.pdf

A global assessment of endemism and species richness across island and mainland regions

GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora

Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) is, "a widely accessible working list of all known plant species, as a step towards a complete world Flora". This paper discusses the importance of the Target to the GSPC itself, to many sectors of science and society, and to decision makers. It then examines the progress made to date and prospects for the Target's completion. Good progress has been made in bryophytes, ferns and gymnosperms with widely accessible working lists either complete or almost so for these groups. Online working lists are available for around 50% of flowering plants. In all, Target 1 is around 53% complete. It is estimated that there are around 352,000 flowering plants and that the current gap in online coverage is around 177,000 species. The major families constituting the gap are identified, the four largest being Apocynaceae, Malvaceae, Ericaceae and Apiaceae. The large majority of families for which there is no working list available are either cosmopolitan or pantropical in distribution. However, progress to date suggests that neither broad distribution nor large numbers of species in a family are insurmountable problems in compiling working lists. The major barrier to completion of Target 1 remains the availability of taxonomists to contribute to the target. Completion of Target 1 by 2010 is possible if botanical institutions recognise the importance of the Target and collaborate, lever funding and prioritise activities appropriately.

Towards Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation : a working list of all known plant species-progress and prospects

The crisis facing the conservation of biodiversity is reflected in a parallel crisis in alpha taxonomy. On one hand, there is an acute need from government and non-government organisations for large-scale and relatively stable species inventories on which to build major biodiversity information systems. On the other, molecular information will have an increasingly important impact on the evidential basis for delimiting species and is likely to result in greater scientific debate and controversy on their circumscription. This paper argues that alpha-taxonomy built on the Internet (alpha e-taxonomy) can provide a key component of the solution. Two main themes are considered: (1) the potential of e-taxonomic revisions for engaging both the specialist taxonomic community and a wider public in gathering taxonomic knowledge and deepening understanding of it, and (2) why alpha-species will continue to play an essential role in the conventional definition of species and what kinds of methodological development this implies for descriptive species taxonomy. The challenges and requirements for sustaining e-taxonomic revisions in the long-term are discussed, with particular reference to models being developed by five initiatives with botanical exemplar websites: CATE (Creating a Taxonomic E-Science), Solanaceae Source, GrassBase and EDIT (European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy) exemplar groups and scratchpads. These projects give a clear indication of the crucially important role of the national and regional taxonomic organisations and their networks in providing both leadership and a fruitful and beneficial human and technical environment for taxonomists, both amateur and professional, to contribute their expertise towards a collective global enterprise.

Alpha e-taxonomy: responses from the systematics community to the biodiversity crisis

Background
Natural History science is characterised by a single immense goal (to document, describe and synthesise all facets pertaining to the diversity of life) that can only be addressed through a seemingly infinite series of smaller studies The discipline's failure to meaningfully connect these small studies with natural history's goal has made it hard to demonstrate the value of natural history to a wider scientific community Digital technologies provide the means to bridge this gap

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Scratchpads: a data-publishing framework to build, share and manage information on the diversity of life

The genetic diversity of Scaevola plumieri (Goodeniaceae), an indigenous dune coloniser, as revealed by Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) fingerprinting

Kehan Harman

Papers

GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora

Towards Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation : a working list of all known plant species-progress and prospects

Alpha e-taxonomy: responses from the systematics community to the biodiversity crisis

Scratchpads: a data-publishing framework to build, share and manage information on the diversity of life

The genetic diversity of Scaevola plumieri (Goodeniaceae), an indigenous dune coloniser, as revealed by Inter Simple Sequence Repeat (ISSR) fingerprinting