Alice Faber Tryon

En Santander, Colombia, asociado al valle del Magdalena Medio se presentan serranías con remanentes boscosos que contrastan con las zonas deforestadas de las partes bajas. Presentamos una serie (90 especímenes de 48 especies) de la Serranía de La Paz, Betulia, catalogada en la Colección de Ornitología del Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Industrial de Santander (UIS-AV) y que proviene principalmente de una expedición en 2023 con el objetivo de estudiar su avifauna a partir de especímenes. La composición de especies de esta serie se comparó con la de otras series de UIS-AV recolectadas recientemente en el Magdalena Medio, y con una serie recolectada en la misma serranía en 1956 cuya información fue obtenida en el GBIF. Nuestra serie de la Serranía de La Paz comparte más especies con un área de bosque continuo en Bolívar que con fragmentos de bosque en Santander. Aunque varias especies de la Serranía de La Paz se registran en otros sitios del Magdalena Medio, nuestra serie incluye a Cotinga nattererii, Trogon rufus y Trogon caligatus que son especies con pocos especímenes para Santander que fueron recolectados hace más de 70 años, además de Euphonia concinna que representa un registro novedoso para el departamento. El 90 % de las especies recolectadas en 1956 están en UIS-AV o se registraron en 2023, pero Psarocolius wagleri, Cacicus cela y Falco sparverius, estuvieron ausentes. La Serranía de La Paz tiene especies de aves características de bosques del Magdalena Medio y puede ser un sitio apropiado para conservarlas.

The family Onocleaceae represents a small family of terrestrial ferns, with four genera and around five species. It has a circumboreal to north temperate distribution, and exhibits a disjunct distribution between Eurasia and North America, including Mexico. Historically, the taxonomy and classification of this family has been subject to debate and contention among scholars, leading to contradictory classifications and disagreements on the number of genera and species within the family. Furthermore, due to this disjunct intercontinental distribution and the lack of detailed study across its wide range, this family merits further study to clarify its distributional pattern. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic reconstructions were based on a concatenated sequence dataset for 17 plastid loci and one nuclear locus, which were generated from 106 ingroup and six outgroup taxa from three families. Phylogenetic analyses support that Onocleaceae is composed of four main clades, and Pentarhizidium was recovered as the first branching lineages in Onocleaceae. Molecular dating and ancestral area reconstruction analyses suggest that the stem group of Onocleaceae originated in Late Cretaceous, with subsequent diversification and establishment of the genera Matteuccia, Onoclea, Onocleopsis, and Pentarhizidium during the Paleogene and Neogene. The ancestors of Matteuccia, Onoclea, and Onocleopsis could have migrated to North America via the Beringian land bridge or North Atlantic land bridge which suggests that the diversification of Matteuccia + Onoclea + Onocleopsis closely aligns with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). In addition, these results suggest that Onocleaceae species diversity peaks during the late Neogene to Quaternary. Studies such as this enhance our understanding of the mechanisms and climatic conditions shaping disjunct distribution in ferns and lycophytes of eastern Asia, North America, and Mexico and contribute to a growing body of evidence from other taxa, to advance our understanding of the origins and migration of plants across continents.

The flowering phenology of many tropical mountain forest tree species remains poorly understood, including flowering synchrony and its drivers across neotropical ecosystems. We obtained herbarium records for 427 tree species from a long-term monitoring transect on the northwestern Ecuadorian Andes, sourced from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Herbario Nacional del Ecuador. Using machine learning algorithms, we identified flowering phenophases from digitized specimen labels and applied circular statistics to build phenological calendars across six climatic regions within the neotropics. We found 47 939 herbarium records, of which 14 938 were classified as flowering by Random Forest Models. We constructed phenological calendars for six regions and 86 species with at least 20 flowering records. Phenological patterns varied considerably across regions, among species within regions, and within species across regions. There was limited interannual synchronicity in flowering patterns within regions primarily driven by bimodal species whose flowering peaks coincided with irradiance peaks. The predominantly high variability of phenological patterns among species and within species likely confers adaptative advantages by reducing interspecific competition during reproductive periods and promoting species coexistence in highly diverse regions with little or no seasonality.

Cold tolerance strategies in plants vary from structural to biochemical permitting many plants to survive and grow on sites that experience freezing conditions intermittently. Although tree ferns occur predominantly across the tropics, they also occur in temperate zones and occasionally in areas that experience sub‐zero temperatures, and how these large ferns survive freezing conditions is unknown. Many temperate tree fern taxa are marcescent – retaining whorls of dead fronds encircling the upper trunk – or develop short or prostrate trunks, possibly to insulate against frost damage to their trunks and growing crowns. We asked the following questions: 1) do global growth patterns and traits of tree ferns respond to freezing conditions associated with latitude and elevation, 2) do growth patterns of tree ferns in New Zealand vary along a temperature‐related gradient, and 3) do marcescent tree fern skirts insulate the growing crown from sub‐zero temperatures? To establish what morphological adaptations permitted the Cyatheales to occur in biomes that experience intermittent sub‐zero temperatures and frost, we 1) reviewed the global distributions of these structural and morphological traits within the tree ferns (Cyatheales); 2) assessed the patterns of tree fern marcescence, and other traits potentially associated with cold tolerance (no trunk, prostrate, short‐trunked) of nine taxa of the Cyatheales along environmental gradients across New Zealand; and 3) conducted a field experiment to assess the thermal insulation properties of tree fern marcescent skirts. We identified significant trends among growth forms, marcescence, and environmental gradients consistent with our hypothesis that these are adaptations to tolerate cold. Our field experiments provide quantitative evidence that marcescent skirts have a strong insulating effect on tree fern trunks. The Cyatheales have evolved several strategies to protect the pith cores of their trunks from extreme cold temperatures in temperate forests allowing them to capture niche space in environments beyond the tropics.

Climate change poses a significant threat to biodiversity and habitats worldwide, with mountainous regions and endemic species particularly vulnerable. One such ecosystem is the campos rupestres, a mountainous environment in the highlands of central-eastern Brazil, characterized by high species richness and endemism. Among this ecosystem's most diverse and abundant endemic genera is Vellozia (Velloziaceae), comprising 127 species. Using species distribution modeling, we assessed how climate change will likely affect suitable habitats for the genus. Additionally, we conducted IUCN extinction risk assessments and applied the EDGE2 method, incorporating a phylogenetic framework to identify species that should be prioritized for conservation. Our findings indicate that, on average, each species of Vellozia is expected to lose 84.26 % of its suitable habitat by 2060, with 13 species projected to lose 100 % of their habitat. Over half of the genus is projected to lose over 92 % of its suitable habitat. The species richness and endemism of Vellozia in the campos rupestres will diminish substantially in both geographic extent and species count. This decline is particularly concerning given that nearly half of the genus is microendemic, with 16 species occurring entirely outside protected areas. These findings highlight the potential for climate change to drastically reduce the habitat size and species richness of Vellozia and overall biodiversity within the campos rupestres ecosystem.

Abstract Background and Aims Quantifying niche similarity among closely related species offers myriad insights into evolutionary history and ecology. In this study, our aim was to explore the interplay of geographical and niche space for rare, endemic plant species and to determine whether endemic habitats were environmentally similar or unique. Methods We characterized the niche of all Leavenworthia species, a genus of rare plants endemic to rocky glades in the eastern USA, using WorldClim data, surface geology, elevation and slope. We calculated the area of range overlap and estimated niche similarity between pairs of species in their total occupied niche space and the subset of niche space shared by both species. We used linear discriminant analyses to determine which niche dimensions differed the most between species. We used niche dimensions with consistently high discriminatory power to perform a random forest classification analysis and principal component analysis. Using a linear model, we related geographical distance to distance in niche space. Key Results Most species comparisons concluded that species niches had diverged, with niche similarity increasing linearly with range overlap. Temperature variation, precipitation amount and seasonality, and surface geology were the most divergent niche dimensions among all species comparisons. Geographical distance explained 42 % of the variation in niche space distance. Sites that were closer in niche space than expected were oriented east–west owing to the strong correlation between latitude and scores on the first principal component. Conclusions Despite being endemic seemingly to very similar habitat, niche similarity is low among Leavenworthia species. Low niche similarity, combined with low geographical overlap, suggests that this lineage of rare plants potentially diversified in isolation but across a very small geographical area. The correlation between geographical space and niche space has received considerable attention, but our results suggest that geographical distance is a weak predictor of distance in niche space.

To understand how and where biodiversity is threatened, it is imperative to build historical baselines that accurately characterize the present and past states of biodiversity across environments. Botanical collections provide important ecological, evolutionary, and biogeographic information on the diversity and distributions of plant taxa, yet biases in collection efforts across spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales are well known. Here, we characterize and quantify trends in botanical collections made from across different abiotic, biotic, and sociopolitical boundaries within the present‐day state of New Mexico. Using a biodiversity informatics approach applied toward a regional case study, we identify opportunities for efficiently improving natural history collection coverage and analyses of botanical diversity. Accurate representation of botanical biodiversity, preserved for future generations through vouchered plant specimens deposited in herbaria, depends on collection decisions made now. This work aims to provide a useful workflow for synthesizing digitized regional botanical collections as researchers prioritize current and future resources in the face of global change.

Climate change is the main cause of global biodiversity loss and changes in the structure of ecological communities. Species distribution models are an efficient tool for predicting suitable areas for species and their vulnerability to climate change. In this study, we evaluated the impact of precipitation and temperature (factors of climate change) on 12 species of the Cyperaceae family, classified into three groups: aquatic, amphibian, and terrestrial. Our results provide a comprehensive overview of habitat projections for aquatic, amphibian and terrestrial Cyperaceae species in the Amazon biome under current and future scenarios. We highlight significant range losses projected for species such as Scleria amazonica and Cyperus lacustris in the future. The relationship between climate and its influence on species distribution is critical, emphasizing the urgent need to conserve biodiversity in the face of climate change. In the models, protected areas were essential refuges for species under threat, highlighting their crucial role in preventing biodiversity loss. Variables such as temperature and seasonality (rainfall variability) strongly influenced the distribution patterns of Cyperaceae species. Seasonal fluctuations such as extreme droughts can influence water availability and the growth dynamics of hydrophytic plants. Amphibian species adapt to temperature fluctuations and changes in precipitation, while terrestrial plants prefer warmer and rainy regions. Our results emphasize the importance of conservation strategies for Amazonian species. We have also shown that protected areas play an essential role in conserving biodiversity and protecting Cyperaceae species from future changes.

Abstract The Neotropics have been host to a myriad of geological and climatic events that have shaped the biodiversity present in the region. Bromeliaceae forms one of the most prominent components of the Neotropical flora, being considered the largest group nearly exclusive to the Americas, with almost 4000 species divided into eight subfamilies. Here, we utilize a new time-calibrated molecular phylogeny including 1268 bromeliad taxa and integrate habitat and morphological data to answer the following questions: (i) Are bromeliad subfamilies monophyletic, and did Neogene and Quaternary events in South America coincide with their divergence? (ii) Did naked seeds of berry-fruited species, epiphytic growth, and climatic factors increase bromeliad diversification? Our analysis reconstructed a new topology concerning some recently diverged lineages, with the genus Bromelia emerging as the sister group of a clade including all remaining Bromelioideae lineages + Puyoideae. Miocene events possibly triggered the diversification of bromeliads after a long period of stasis during the Palaeogene. We hypothesize that the morphological shift between Bromelia and Bromelioideae (except Bromelia) is related to the colonization of a new high-elevation environment by Puyoideae in the Andes. Additionally, our results show that naked seeds and the epiphytic growth form positively influence diversification rate, while precipitation, temperature, and elevation have a negative influence. We emphasize the importance of considering a variety of morphological and ecological features to enhance our understanding of bromeliad evolution.

The campos rupestres and the Brazilian Atlantic Forest Inselbergs (BAFI) are highly diverse vegetation types that grow on mountaintops of eastern Brazil and show outstanding levels of endemism. The plant family Velloziaceae is an iconic element of these vegetations, with the genus Vellozia, being exceptionally abundant in both these vegetations. In this study, we use Vellozia as a model to address three main questions: (i) What was the distribution of Vellozia’s most recent common ancestor? (ii) Did the range expansions of Vellozia occur during periods characterized by global cooling? (iii) When did Vellozia colonize the different South American highlands they occupy nowadays? To address these questions, we reconstructed the phylogeny of Vellozia using sequences of four molecular markers analysed using Bayesian and maximum likelihood inferences. We used the resulting phylogeny to reconstruct the ancestral distribution of Vellozia using the DEC model. Our findings indicate that Vellozia originated and subsequently diversified in the Oligocene, when the genus was broadly distributed through the Andes, BAFI, Cerrado, Caatinga, and the Chapada Diamantina, suggesting that the Cerrado may acted as a corridor between the Andes and eastern mountaintop vegetations. Vellozia subsequently occupied the southern Espinhaço during the Early Miocene, which was followed by increased diversification rates and several range expansions, especially after the Middle-Miocene Climatic Optimum, when cooler and drier periods allowed the expansion of open environments and the retraction of forests, allowing Vellozia to expand their distribution. These results highlight the unique evolutionary history of Vellozia and the importance of climatic cooling for the expansion of the genus.