Science Enabled by Specimen Data

To clarify biogeographic patterns of two mushroom species (Phallus merulinus and Geastrum courtecuissei) previously reported from Myanmar, sequence data of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of nuclear ribosomal DNA were retrieved from GenBank. The BLAST search and phylogenetic analyses of Phallus indicated that P. merulinus and P. atrovolvatus from wide areas, including Australia, Myanmar, Thailand, Brazil, and French Guiana, cannot be distinguished molecularly. The species was, therefore, considered widespread across tropical to subtropical regions. In contrast, G. courtecuissei from Myanmar was tightly clustered exclusively with G. courtecuissei from Central and South America, supporting the idea of its disjunct distribution between Southeast Asia (Myanmar) and Central-South Americas.

Xue, T., S. R. Gadagkar, T. P. Albright, X. Yang, J. Li, C. Xia, J. Wu, and S. Yu. 2021. Prioritizing conservation of biodiversity in an alpine region: Distribution pattern and conservation status of seed plants in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Global Ecology and Conservation 32: e01885. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01885

The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) harbors abundant and diverse plant life owing to its high habitat heterogeneity. However, the distribution pattern of biodiversity hotspots and their conservation status remain unclear. Based on 148,283 high-resolution occurrence coordinates of 13,450 seed plants, w…

TREVIÑO-ZEVALLOS, I., I. GARCÍA-CUNCHILLOS, and C. LADO. 2021. New records of Myxomycetes (Amoebozoa) from the tropical Andes. Phytotaxa 522: 231–239. https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.522.3.6

The Myxomycetes comprise a remarkably diverse group of organisms within Amoebozoa, with over 1000 species currently recognized. These organisms, at the end of their life cycles produce fruiting bodies which are the basis for their systematics. Despite being a biodiversity hotspot, the tropical Andes…

Ma, C.-S., W. Zhang, Y. Peng, F. Zhao, X.-Q. Chang, K. Xing, L. Zhu, et al. 2021. Climate warming promotes pesticide resistance through expanding overwintering range of a global pest. Nature Communications 12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25505-7

Climate change has the potential to change the distribution of pests globally and their resistance to pesticides, thereby threatening global food security in the 21st century. However, predicting where these changes occur and how they will influence current pest control efforts is a challenge. Using…

Fernández‐López, J., M. T. Telleria, M. Dueñas, T. May, and M. P. Martín. 2021. DNA barcode analyses improve accuracy in fungal species distribution models. Ecology and Evolution 11: 8993–9009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7737

Species distribution models based on environmental predictors are useful to explain a species geographic range. For many groups of organisms, including fungi, the increase in occurrence data sets has generalized their use. However, fungal species are not always easy to distinguish, and taxonomy of m…

Cross, A. T., T. A. Krueger, P. M. Gonella, A. S. Robinson, and A. S. Fleischmann. 2020. Conservation of carnivorous plants in the age of extinction. Global Ecology and Conservation 24: e01272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01272

Carnivorous plants (CPs)—those possessing specific strategies to attract, capture and kill animal prey and obtain nutrition through the absorption of their biomass—are harbingers of anthropogenic degradation and destruction of ecosystems. CPs exhibit highly specialised and often very sensitive ecolo…