A global growth‐form database for 143,616 vascular plant species

Taseski, Guy; Beloe, Charlotte J; Gallagher, Rachael V.; Chan, Justin Y.; Dalrymple, Rhiannon L.; Cornwell, William K.

doi:10.1002/ecy.2614

Cited by 21 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…While it is not the first time that a within-site variability is observed for lianas [38], data remain scarce. Consequently, lianas are considered one homogeneous growth form and modeled so by necessity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Within-Site Variability of Liana Wood Anatomical Traits: A Case Study in Laussat, French Guiana

Meunier

Moorthy

Deurwaerder

et al. 2020

Forests

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Research Highlights: We investigated the variability of vessel diameter distributions within the liana growth form among liana individuals originating from a single site in Laussat, French Guiana. Background and Objectives: Lianas (woody vines) are key components of tropical forests. Lianas are believed to be strong competitors for water, thanks to their presumed efficient vascular systems. However, unlike tropical trees, lianas are overlooked in field data collection. As a result, lianas are often referred to as a homogeneous growth form while little is known about the hydraulic architecture variation among liana individuals. Materials and Methods: We measured several wood hydraulic and structural traits (e.g., basic specific gravity, vessel area, and vessel diameter distribution) of 22 liana individuals in a single sandy site in Laussat, French Guiana. We compared the liana variability of these wood traits and the correlations among them with an existing liana pantropical dataset and two published datasets of trees originating from different, but species-rich, tropical sites. Results: Liana vessel diameter distribution and density were heterogeneous among individuals: there were two orders of magnitude difference between the smallest (4 µm) and the largest (494 µm) vessel diameters, a 50-fold difference existed between extreme vessel densities ranging from 1.8 to 89.3 vessels mm−2, the mean vessel diameter varied between 26 µm and 271 µm, and the individual theoretical stem hydraulic conductivity estimates ranged between 28 and 1041 kg m−1 s−1 MPa−1. Basic specific gravity varied between 0.26 and 0.61. Consequently, liana wood trait variability, even within a small sample, was comparable in magnitude with tree surveys from other tropical sites and the pantropical liana dataset. Conclusions: This study illustrates that even controlling for site and soil type, liana traits are heterogeneous and cannot be considered as a homogeneous growth form. Our results show that the liana hydraulic architecture heterogeneity across and within sites warrants further investigation in order to categorize lianas into functional groups in the same way as trees

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To compare the variability of liana basic specific gravity in our study site with global estimates, we extracted all measured values corresponding to liana species from the Global Wood Density Database (GWDDB) [37] merged with a growth form database [38].…”

Section: Anatomical Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Within-Site Variability of Liana Wood Anatomical Traits: A Case Study in Laussat, French Guiana

Meunier

Moorthy

Deurwaerder

et al. 2020

Forests

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“…Data on threatened status, rarity and species origin were obtained from the Red List of Vascular Plants of the Netherlands [ 26 ]. Ninety-three percent of the data about growth form were extracted from online existing databases [ 40 – 42 ] and 7% were manually assigned using images on Google Image ( https://images.google.com/ ) and Wikipedia ( https://www.wikipedia.org/ ). Since we were interested in differences between main categories, for the threatened status of species, we omitted Data Deficient (DD), and reclassified Least Concern (LC) and Near Threatened (NT) as ‘not threatened’ and Vulnerable (VU), Endangered (EN) and Critically Endangered (CR) as ‘threatened’.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Importance of natural land cover for plant species’ conservation: A nationwide study in The Netherlands

et al. 2021

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While shifts to high-intensity land cover have caused overwhelming biodiversity loss, it remains unclear how important natural land cover is to the occurrence, and thus the conservation, of different species groups. We used over 4 million plant species’ observations to evaluate the conservation importance of natural land cover by its association with the occurrence probability of 1 122 native and 403 exotic plant species at 1 km resolution by species distribution models. We found that 74.9% of native species, 83.9% of the threatened species and 77.1% rare species preferred landscapes with over 50% natural land cover, while these landscapes only accounted for 15.6% of all grids. Most species preferred natural areas with a mixture of forest and open areas rather than areas with completely open or forested nature. Compared to native species, exotic species preferred areas with lower natural land cover and the cover of natural open area, but they both preferred extremely high and low cover of natural forest area. Threatened and rare species preferred higher natural land cover, either cover of natural forest area or cover of natural open area than not threatened and common species, but rare species were also more likely to occur in landscapes with 0–25% cover of natural open area. Although more natural land cover in a landscape will not automatically result in more native species, because there is often a non-linear increase in species occurrence probability when going from 0% to 100% natural land cover, for conserving purposes, over 80% natural land cover should be kept in landscapes for conserving threatened and very rare species, and 60% natural land cover is the best for conserving common native species. Our results stress the importance of natural areas for plant species’ conservation. It also informs improvements to species conservation by increasing habitat diversity.

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“…Furthermore, we discuss and illustrate how the available tree biodiversity data could be applied to better understand macroecological patterns of vegetation. Where applicable, we also compare data availability for trees with that reported for all plants (Cornwell et al, 2019).…”

Section: Under S Tanding the Macroecology Of Veg E Tation Us Ing E Xis Ting Tree B Iodiver S It Y Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthesizing tree biodiversity data to understand global patterns and processes of vegetation

Keppel

Craven

Weigelt

et al. 2021

J Vegetation Science

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Aims Trees dominate the biomass in many ecosystems and are essential for ecosystem functioning and human well‐being. They are also one of the best‐studied functional groups of plants, with vast amounts of biodiversity data available in scattered sources. We here aim to illustrate that an efficient integration of these data could produce a more holistic understanding of vegetation. Methods To assess the extent of potential data integration, we use key databases of plant biodiversity to: (a) obtain a list of tree species and their distributions; (b) identify coverage of and gaps in different aspects of tree biodiversity data; and (c) discuss large‐scale patterns of tree biodiversity in relation to vegetation. Results Our global list of trees included 58,044 species. Taxonomic coverage varies in three key databases, with data on the distribution, functional traits, and molecular sequences for about 84%, 45% and 44% of all tree species, which is >10% greater than for plants overall. For 28% of all tree species, data are available in all three databases. However, less data are digitally accessible about the demography, ecological interactions, and socio‐economic role of tree species. Integrating and imputing existing tree biodiversity data, mobilization of non‐digitized resources and targeted data collection, especially in tropical countries, could help closing some of the remaining data gaps. Conclusions Due to their key ecosystem roles and having large amounts of accessible data, trees are a good model group for understanding vegetation patterns. Indeed, tree biodiversity data are already beginning to elucidate the community dynamics, functional diversity, evolutionary history and ecological interactions of vegetation, with great potential for future applications. An interoperable and openly accessible framework linking various databases would greatly benefit future macroecological studies and should be linked to a platform that makes information readily accessible to end users in biodiversity conservation and management.

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A global growth‐form database for 143,616 vascular plant species

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Within-Site Variability of Liana Wood Anatomical Traits: A Case Study in Laussat, French Guiana

Within-Site Variability of Liana Wood Anatomical Traits: A Case Study in Laussat, French Guiana

Importance of natural land cover for plant species’ conservation: A nationwide study in The Netherlands

Synthesizing tree biodiversity data to understand global patterns and processes of vegetation

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