Science Enabled by Specimen Data
Lebeda, A., E. Křístková, M. Kitner, Ľ. Majeský, I. Doležalová, C. K. Khoury, M. P. Widrlechner, et al. 2019. Research Gaps and Challenges in the Conservation and Use of North American Wild Lettuce Germplasm. Crop Science 59: 2337–2356. https://doi.org/10.2135/cropsci2019.05.0350
The North American crop wild relatives (CWR) of lettuce (Lactuca L.) represent an underexplored pool of genetic diversity of potential value to breeding programs. The 10 species belong to three different groups: a native clade including at least six allotetraploid species [L. biennis (Moench) Fernal…
Margaroni, S., K. B. Petersen, R. Gleadow, and M. Burd. 2019. The role of spore size in the global pattern of co‐occurrence among Selaginella species. Journal of Biogeography 46: 807–815. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13532
Aim: Separation of regeneration niches may promote coexistence among closely related plant species, but there is little evidence that regeneration traits affect species ranges at broad geographical scales. We address patterns of co‐occurrence within the genus Selaginella, an ancient lineage of free‐…
Sheppard, C. S., and F. M. Schurr. 2018. Biotic resistance or introduction bias? Immigrant plant performance decreases with residence times over millennia. Global Ecology and Biogeography. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12844
Aim: Invasions are dynamic processes. Invasive spread causes the geographical range size of alien species to increase with residence time. However, with time native competitors and antagonists can adapt to invaders. This build‐up of biotic resistance may eventually limit the invader’s performance an…
Peterson, A. T., A. Asase, D. Canhos, S. de Souza, and J. Wieczorek. 2018. Data Leakage and Loss in Biodiversity Informatics. Biodiversity Data Journal 6. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.6.e26826
The field of biodiversity informatics is in a massive, “grow-out” phase of creating and enabling large-scale biodiversity data resources. Because perhaps 90% of existing biodiversity data nonetheless remains unavailable for science and policy applications, the question arises as to how these existin…
Joffard, N., F. Massol, M. Grenié, C. Montgelard, and B. Schatz. 2018. Effect of pollination strategy, phylogeny and distribution on pollination niches of Euro‐Mediterranean orchids I. Bartomeus [ed.],. Journal of Ecology 107: 478–490. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13013
1.Pollination niches are important components of ecological niches and have played a major role in the diversification of Angiosperms. In this study, we focused on Euro‐Mediterranean orchids, which use diverse pollination strategies and interact with various functional groups of insects. In these or…
Petersen, K. B., and M. Burd. 2018. The adaptive value of heterospory: Evidence from Selaginella. Evolution 72: 1080–1091. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.13484
Heterospory was a pivotal evolutionary innovation for land plants, but it has never been clear why it evolved. We used the geographic distributions of 114 species of the heterosporous lycophyte Selaginella to explore the functional ecology of microspore and megaspore size, traits that would be corre…