Science Rendue Possible

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…

Stone, B. W., and A. D. Wolfe. 2021. Phylogeographic analysis of shrubby beardtongues reveals range expansions during the Last Glacial Maximum and implicates the Klamath Mountains as a hotspot for hybridization. Molecular Ecology 30: 3826–3839. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15992

Quaternary glacial cycles often altered species' geographic distributions, which in turn altered the geographic structure of species' genetic diversity. In many cases, glacial expansion forced species in temperate climates to contract their ranges and reside in small pockets of suitable habitat (ref…

Ringelberg, J. J., N. E. Zimmermann, A. Weeks, M. Lavin, and C. E. Hughes. 2020. Biomes as evolutionary arenas: Convergence and conservatism in the trans‐continental succulent biome A. Moles [ed.],. Global Ecology and Biogeography 29: 1100–1113. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13089

Aim: Historically, biomes have been defined based on their structurally and functionally similar vegetation, but there is debate about whether these similarities are superficial, and about how biomes are defined and mapped. We propose that combined assessment of evolutionary convergence of plant fun…

Lebeda, A., E. Křístková, M. Kitner, Ľ. Majeský, I. Doležalová, C. K. Khoury, M. P. Widrlechner, et al. 2019. Research Gaps and Challenges in the Conservation and Use of North American Wild Lettuce Germplasm. Crop Science 59: 2337–2356. https://doi.org/10.2135/cropsci2019.05.0350

The North American crop wild relatives (CWR) of lettuce (Lactuca L.) represent an underexplored pool of genetic diversity of potential value to breeding programs. The 10 species belong to three different groups: a native clade including at least six allotetraploid species [L. biennis (Moench) Fernal…

Folk, R. A., R. L. Stubbs, M. E. Mort, N. Cellinese, J. M. Allen, P. S. Soltis, D. E. Soltis, and R. P. Guralnick. 2019. Rates of niche and phenotype evolution lag behind diversification in a temperate radiation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116: 10874–10882. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817999116

Environmental change can create opportunities for increased rates of lineage diversification, but continued species accumulation has been hypothesized to lead to slowdowns via competitive exclusion and niche partitioning. Such density-dependent models imply tight linkages between diversification and…

Peterson, A. T., A. Asase, D. Canhos, S. de Souza, and J. Wieczorek. 2018. Data Leakage and Loss in Biodiversity Informatics. Biodiversity Data Journal 6. https://doi.org/10.3897/bdj.6.e26826

The field of biodiversity informatics is in a massive, “grow-out” phase of creating and enabling large-scale biodiversity data resources. Because perhaps 90% of existing biodiversity data nonetheless remains unavailable for science and policy applications, the question arises as to how these existin…

Antonelli, A., A. Zizka, F. A. Carvalho, R. Scharn, C. D. Bacon, D. Silvestro, and F. L. Condamine. 2018. Amazonia is the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115: 6034–6039. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713819115

The American tropics (the Neotropics) are the most species-rich realm on Earth, and for centuries, scientists have attempted to understand the origins and evolution of their biodiversity. It is now clear that different regions and taxonomic groups have responded differently to geological and climati…