Global Distribution and Ecology of Hyperaccumulator Plants

Abstract

A large body of analytical data is available on the inorganic composition of many thousands of plant species, for which typical concentration ranges have been tabulated for major, minor, and trace elements. These elements include those that have been shown essential for plant growth, as well as others that lack this status, at least universally. Metalliferous soils, having abnormally high concentrations of some of the elements that are generally present only at minor (e.g. 200-2000 μg g À1 ) or trace (e.g. 0.1-200 μg g À1 ) levels, vary widely in their effects on plants and have attracted increasing attention during the last 50 years. The effects depend on the species, the relevant elements, and soil characteristics that influence the availability of metals to plants. Some of these soils are toxic to all or most higher plants. Others have hosted the development of specialized plant communities consisting of a restricted and locally characteristic range of metal-tolerant species. These plants often show a slightly elevated concentration of the elements with which the soil is enriched, but in places a species exhibits extreme accumulation of one or more of these elements, to a concentration level that may be hundreds or even thousands of times greater than that usually found in plants on the most common soils. These plants, now widely referred to as hyperaccumulators, are a remarkable resource for many types of fundamental scientific investigation (plant systematics, ecophysiology, biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology) and for applications such as phytoremediation and agromining, and are discussed in detail below.

Phylogenetic and geographic distribution of nickel hyperaccumulation in neotropical Psychotria

“…The phenomenon of hyperaccumulation has a broad geographic distribution (Reeves et al., , ), with known centers of hyperaccumulator biodiversity including the Mediterranean basin (Brooks, ; Reeves and Adigüzel, ), New Caledonia (Jaffré et al., ; van der Ent et al., ), Malaysia (van der Ent et al., , ), Brazil (Brooks et al., ; Reeves et al., ), and Cuba (Reeves et al., , ). In the neotropics, hyperaccumulators have been identified in South America and the Greater Antilles (Reeves, ; Campbell et al., ), but thus far no hyperaccumulators have been reported from Central America and Mexico.…”

Assessment of Potential Toxic Metals in a Ramsar Wetland, Central Mexico and its Self-Depuration through Eichhornia crassipes

“…In spite of the above, the translocation factor reflects only the ability to transport the metals into the aerial part of the plants. However, the hyperaccumulation property is related to the ability to concentrate metals in their shoots [42].…”

Physiological Responses of Wetland Species Rumex Hydrolapathum to Increased Concentration of Biogenous Heavy Metals Zn and Mn in Substrate

“…soils to identify those with hyperaccumulation potential. So called metal hyperaccumulators are plants able to accummulate relatively high concentration of metals in shoots when growing in polluted soil, exceeding average values of non-accumulators by 10 to 500 times (Reeves et al, 2018). An important functional characteristic of hyperaccumulators is the ability to store most of the metal in aboveground parts (shoot to root concentration ratio or translocation factor > 1) at a concentration higher than that in soil (shoot to soil concentration ratio or bioconcentration factor > 1) (Buscaroli, 2017).…”