The shortage of reliable primary taxonomic data limits the description of biological taxa and the understanding of biodiversity patterns and processes, complicating biogeographical, ecological, and evolutionary studies. This deficit creates a significant taxonomic impediment to biodiversity research and conservation planning. The taxonomic impediment and the biodiversity crisis are widely recognized, highlighting the urgent need for reliable taxonomic data. Over the past decade, numerous countries worldwide have devoted considerable effort to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), which called for the preparation of a working list of all known plant species by 2010 and an online world Flora by 2020. Brazil is a megadiverse country, home to more of the world's known plant species than any other country. Despite that, Flora Brasiliensis, concluded in 1906, was the last comprehensive treatment of the Brazilian flora. The lack of accurate estimates of the number of species of algae, fungi, and plants occurring in Brazil contributes to the prevailing taxonomic impediment and delays progress towards the GSPC targets. Over the past 12 years, a legion of taxonomists motivated to meet Target 1 of the GSPC, worked together to gather and integrate knowledge on the algal, plant, and fungal diversity of Brazil. Overall, a team of about 980 taxonomists joined efforts in a highly collaborative project that used cybertaxonomy to prepare an updated Flora of Brazil, showing the power of scientific collaboration to reach ambitious goals. This paper presents an overview of the Brazilian Flora 2020 and provides taxonomic and spatial updates on the algae, fungi, and plants found in one of the world's most biodiverse countries. We further identify collection gaps and summarize future goals that extend beyond 2020. Our results show that Brazil is home to 46,975 native species of algae, fungi, and plants, of which 19,669 are endemic to the country. The data compiled to date suggests that the Atlantic Rainforest might be the most diverse Brazilian domain for all plant groups except gymnosperms, which are most diverse in the Amazon. However, scientific knowledge of Brazilian diversity is still unequally distributed, with the Atlantic Rainforest and the Cerrado being the most intensively sampled and studied biomes in the country. In times of “scientific reductionism”, with botanical and mycological sciences suffering pervasive depreciation in recent decades, the first online Flora of Brazil 2020 significantly enhanced the quality and quantity of taxonomic data available for algae, fungi, and plants from Brazil. This project also made all the information freely available online, providing a firm foundation for future research and for the management, conservation, and sustainable use of the Brazilian funga and flora.

Aiphanes argos is a new species of palm segregated from Aiphanes parvifolia, which is now recognized to be a species complex. Aiphanes argos is one of the few rheophytic members of the palm family, and is endemic to a small area in the Samaná Norte River canyon in Antioquia, Colombia, where it is critically endangered because its populations are threatened by the damming of the river for a hydroelectric plant. The epiteth argos is the name of the conglomerate that intends to build the dam, and is given to the palm as a plea for the conservation of the Samaná Norte River canyon.

We studied the rheophytic vascular flora of the Samaná Norte River basin in Antioquia, Colombia, by rafting along a 61.4-km stretch of the river and establishing 10 plots on its banks. We found 58 species of rheophytes, including morphospecies, belonging to 29 families, mostly herbs and subshrubs. At least nine of the species are known only from this river basin and seven of them were discovered as new to science during this study. The nine species endemic to this river basin have estimated area of occupancy smaller than 10 km 2 and are here categorized as critically endangered. We recommend reconsidering plans to dam the river for a hydroelectric plant, as it might reduce populations of the nine critically endangered species and might drive at least two of them to extinction.

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Recent field work and the study of new collections have revealed that the Andean palm Aiphanes parvifolia, as interpreted in the most recent monograph of the genus, actually included five species. Three of them, Aiphanes decipiens, Aiphanes gloria and Aiphanes tatama, whose specimens were previously considered as A. parvifolia, are described here as new, and another one, also formerly treated as A. parvifolia, was recently described as Aiphanes argos. Two additional species, not collected before, belong also to this complex and are described here as new: Aiphanes bio and Aiphanes cogollo. The true Aiphanes parvifolia is recircumscribed, and the current neotype is superseded. A taxonomic treatment of all the species in the group is presented, including detailed descriptions and illustrations, and a key to identify them. Six of the species are categorized as Critically Endangered and one as Endangered, based on IUCN criteria.

The Atlantic Forest is one of the most threatened biomes in the world. Despite that, this biome still includes many areas that are poorly known floristically, including several protected areas, such as the "Floresta Nacional do Rio Preto" ("Flona do Rio Preto"), located in the Brazilian State of Espírito Santo. This study used a published vascular plant species list for this protected area from the "Catálogo de Plantas das Unidades de Conservação do Brasil" as the basis to synthesise the species richness, endemism, conservation and new species occurrences found in the "Flona do Rio Preto". The published list of vascular plants was based on field expeditions conducted between 2018 and 2020 and data obtained from herbarium collections available in online databases. Overall, 722 species were documented for the "Flona do Rio Preto", 711 of which are native to Brazil and 349 are endemic to the Atlantic Forest. In addition, 60 species are geographically disjunct between the Atlantic and the Amazon Forests. Most of the documented species are woody and more than 50% of these are trees. Twenty-three species are threatened (CR, EN and VU), while five are Data Deficient (DD). Thirty-two species are new records for the State of Espírito Santo. Our results expand the knowledge of the flora of the Atlantic Forest and provide support for the development of new conservation policies for this protected area.

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The topographic gradients of the Tropical Andes may have triggered species divergence by different mechanisms. Topography separates species’ geographical ranges and offers climatic heterogeneity, which could potentially foster local adaptation to specific climatic conditions and result in narrowly distributed endemic species. Such a pattern is found in the Andean centered palm genus Aiphanes. To test the extent to which geographic barriers and climatic heterogeneity can explain distribution patterns in Aiphanes, we sampled 34 out of 36 currently recognized species in that genus and sequenced them by Sanger sequencing and/or sequence target capture sequencing. We generated Bayesian, likelihood, and species-tree phylogenies, with which we explored climatic trait evolution from current climatic occupation. We also estimated species distribution models to test the relative roles of geographical and climatic divergence in their evolution. We found that Aiphanes originated in the Miocene in Andean environments and possibly in mid-elevation habitats. Diversification is related to the occupation of the adjacent high and low elevation habitats tracking high annual precipitation and low precipitation seasonality (moist habitats). Different species in different clades repeatedly occupy all the different temperatures offered by the elevation gradient from 0 to 3,000 m in different geographically isolated areas. A pattern of conserved adaptation to moist environments is consistent among the clades. Our results stress the evolutionary roles of niche truncation of wide thermal tolerance by physical range fragmentation, coupled with water-related niche conservatism, to colonize the topographic gradient.