Dataset Information

Botanic gardens are an untapped resource for studying the functional ecology of tropical plants.

ABSTRACT: Functional traits are increasingly used to understand the ecology of plants and to predict their responses to global changes. Unfortunately, trait data are unavailable for the majority of plant species. The lack of trait data is especially prevalent for hard-to-measure traits and for tropical plant species, potentially owing to the many inherent difficulties of working with species in remote, hyperdiverse rainforest systems. The living collections of botanic gardens provide convenient access to large numbers of tropical plant species and can potentially be used to quickly augment trait databases and advance our understanding of species' responses to climate change. In this review, we quantitatively assess the availability of trait data for tropical versus temperate species, the diversity of species available for sampling in several exemplar tropical botanic gardens and the validity of garden-based leaf and root trait measurements. Our analyses support the contention that the living collections of botanic gardens are a valuable scientific resource that can contribute significantly to research on plant functional ecology and conservation.This article is part of the theme issue 'Biological collections for understanding biodiversity in the Anthropocene'.

SUBMITTER: Perez TM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6282089 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Botanic gardens are an untapped resource for studying the functional ecology of tropical plants.

Perez Timothy M TM Valverde-Barrantes Oscar O Bravo Catherine C Taylor Tyeen C TC Fadrique Belén B Hogan J Aaron JA Pardo Christine J CJ Stroud James T JT Baraloto Christopher C Feeley Kenneth J KJ

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 20181119 1763

Functional traits are increasingly used to understand the ecology of plants and to predict their responses to global changes. Unfortunately, trait data are unavailable for the majority of plant species. The lack of trait data is especially prevalent for hard-to-measure traits and for tropical plant species, potentially owing to the many inherent difficulties of working with species in remote, hyperdiverse rainforest systems. The living collections of botanic gardens provide convenient access to ...[more]

PMID: 30455208

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundZoological gardens contain unique configurations of exotic and endemic animals and plants that create a diverse range of developing sites and potential sources of blood meals for local mosquitoes. This may imply unusual interspecific pathogen transmission risks involving zoo vertebrates, like avian malaria to captive penguins. Understanding mosquito ecology and host feeding patterns is necessary to improve mosquito control and disease prevention measures in these environments.MethodsMosquito sampling took place in Chester Zoo for 3 years (2017, 2018, and 2019) and for 1 year in Flamingo Land (2017) using different trapping methods. Blood-fed mosquitoes were identified and their blood meal was amplified by PCR, sequenced, and blasted for host species identification.ResultsIn total, 640 blood-fed mosquitoes were collected [Culex pipiens (n = 497), Culiseta annulata (n = 81), Anopheles maculipennis s.l. (n = 7), An. claviger (n = 1), and unidentifiable (n = 55)]. Successful identification of the host species was achieved from 159 blood-fed mosquitoes. Mosquitoes fed on birds (n = 74), non-human mammals (n = 20), and humans (n = 71). There were mixed blood meals from two hosts (n = 6). The proportions of blood-fed mosquitoes varied across sampling seasons and sites within the zoos. The use of resting traps and aspiration of vegetation were more efficient techniques for capturing blood-fed mosquitoes than traps for host-seeking or gravid mosquitoes. By relating the locations of zoo vertebrates to where fed mosquitoes were trapped, the minimum travelling distances were calculated (13.7 to 366.7 m). Temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, proximity to zoo vertebrate exhibits, and vegetation level were found to be significantly associated with the proportion of captured blood-fed mosquitoes by generalized linear modelling.ConclusionsMosquito feeding behaviour in zoos is mainly influenced by time, location (sampling area), temperature, and host availability, which highlights the value of mosquito monitoring in complex settings to plan control strategies and potentially reduce inherent disease transmission risks for humans and threatened zoo vertebrates.

Project description:Two main theories have attempted to explain variation in plant species composition (?-diversity). Niche theory proposes that most of the variation is related to environment (environmental filtering), whereas neutral theory posits that dispersal limitation is the main driver of ?-diversity. In this study, we first explored how ?- and ?-diversity of plant functional groups defined by growth form (trees, shrubs and lianas, which represent different strategies of resource partitioning), and dispersal syndrome (autochory, anemochory and zoochory, which represent differences in dispersal limitation) vary with successional age and topographic position in a tropical dry forest. Second, we examined the effects of environmental, spatial, and spatially-structured environmental factors on ?-diversity of functional groups; we used the spatial structure of sampling sites as a proxy for dispersal limitation, and elevation, soil properties and forest stand age as indicators of environmental filtering. We recorded 200 species and 22,245 individuals in 276 plots; 120 species were trees, 41 shrubs and 39 lianas. We found that ?-diversity was highest for shrubs, intermediate for lianas and lowest for trees, and was slightly higher for zoochorous than for autochorous and anemochorous species. All three dispersal syndromes, trees and shrubs varied in composition among vegetation classes (successional age and topographic position), whilst lianas did not. ?-diversity was influenced mostly by proxies of environmental filtering, except for shrubs, for which the influence of dispersal limitation was more important. Stand age and topography significantly influenced ?-diversity across functional groups, but showed a low influence on ?-diversity -possibly due to the counterbalancing effect of resprouting on plant distribution and composition. Our results show that considering different plant functional groups reveals important differences in both ?- and ?-diversity patterns and correlates that are not apparent when focusing on overall woody plant diversity, and that have important implications for ecological theory and biodiversity conservation.

Dataset Information

Botanic gardens are an untapped resource for studying the functional ecology of tropical plants.

Publications

Botanic gardens are an untapped resource for studying the functional ecology of tropical plants.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets