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Biodiversidata: A novel dataset for the vascular plant species diversity in Uruguay.

ABSTRACT: Background:South America hosts some of the world's most prominent biodiversity hotspots. Yet, Uruguay - a country where multiple major ecosystems converge - ranks amongst the countries with the lowest levels of available digital biodiversity data in the continent. Such prevalent data scarcity has significantly undermined our ability to progress towards evidence-based conservation actions - a critical limitation for a country with a strong focus on agricultural industries and only 1.3% of the land surface guarded by protected areas. Under today's rapid biodiversity loss and environmental changes, the need for open-access biodiversity data is more pressing than ever before. To address this national issue, Biodiversidata - Uruguay's first Consortium of Biodiversity Data - has recently emerged with the aim of assembling a constantly growing database for the biodiversity of this country. While the first phase of the project targeted vertebrate biodiversity, the second phase presented in this paper spans the biodiversity of plants. New information:As part of the second phase of the Biodiversidata initiative, we present the first comprehensive open-access species-level database of the vascular plant diversity recorded in Uruguay to date (i.e. all species for which data are currently available and species presence has been confirmed). It contains 12,470 occurrence records from across 1,648 species and 160 families, which roughly represents 60% of the total recorded flora of Uruguay. The primary biodiversity data include extant native and introduced species from the lycophytes, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms groups. Records were collated from multiple sources, including data available in peer-reviewed scientific literature, institutional scientific collections and datasets contributed by members of the Biodiversidata initiative. The complete database can be accessed at the Zenodo repository: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3954406.

SUBMITTER: Grattarola F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7606476 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Biodiversidata: A novel dataset for the vascular plant species diversity in Uruguay.

Grattarola Florencia F González Andrés A Mai Patricia P Cappuccio Laura L Fagúndez-Pachón César C Rossi Florencia F Teixeira de Mello Franco F Urtado Lucía L Pincheira-Donoso Daniel D

Biodiversity data journal 20201026

<h4>Background</h4>South America hosts some of the world's most prominent biodiversity hotspots. Yet, Uruguay - a country where multiple major ecosystems converge - ranks amongst the countries with the lowest levels of available digital biodiversity data in the continent. Such prevalent data scarcity has significantly undermined our ability to progress towards evidence-based conservation actions - a critical limitation for a country with a strong focus on agricultural industries and only 1.3% of ...[more]

PMID: 33192152

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Project description:BackgroundThe Atlantic Forest is globally one of the priority ecoregions for biodiversity conservation. In Argentina, it is represented by the Paranense Forest, which covers a vast area of Misiones Province between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers. The Uruguay River is a global hotspot of freshwater gastropod diversity, here mainly represented by Tateidae (genus Potamolithus) and to a lesser extent Chilinidae. The family Chilinidae (Gastropoda, Hygrophila) includes 21 species currently recorded in Argentina, and three species in the Uruguay River. The species of Chilinidae occur in quite different types of habitats, but generally in clean oxygenated water recording variable temperature ranges. Highly oxygenated freshwater environments (waterfalls and rapids) are the most vulnerable continental environments. We provide here novel information on three new species of Chilinidae from environments containing waterfalls and rapids in the Uruguay River malacological province of Argentina.Materials and methodsThe specimens were collected in 2010. We analyzed shell, radula, and nervous and reproductive systems, and determined the molecular genetics. The genetic distance was calculated for two mitochondrial markers (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I-COI- and cytochrome b -Cyt b-) for these three new species and the species recorded from the Misionerean, Uruguay River and Lower Paraná-Río de la Plata malacological provinces. In addition, the COI data were analyzed phylogenetically by the neighbor-joining and Bayesian inference techniques.ResultsThe species described here are different in terms of shell, radula and nervous and reproductive systems, mostly based on the sculpture of the penis sheath. Phylogenetic analyses grouped the three new species with those present in the Lower Paraná-Río de la Plata and Uruguay River malacological provinces.DiscussionPhylogenetic analyses confirm the separation between the Uruguay River and the Misionerean malacological provinces in northeast Argentina. These new endemic species from the Uruguay River add further support to the suggestion that this river is a diversity hotspot of freshwater gastropods (with 54 species present in this basin, 15 of them endemic). These endemic species from environments with rapids and waterfalls should be taken into account by government agencies before the construction of dams that modify those ecologic niches in the Uruguay River.

Dataset Information

Biodiversidata: A novel dataset for the vascular plant species diversity in Uruguay.

Publications

Biodiversidata: A novel dataset for the vascular plant species diversity in Uruguay.

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