ORCID Profile
0000-0002-8136-5233
Current Organisation
Aarhus Universitet
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 20-04-2023
DOI: 10.1002/PPP3.10369
Abstract: Plants are fundamental to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and are key to human livelihoods. To protect plant ersity, systematic approaches to conservation assessment are needed. Many nations have legislation or other policy instruments that seek to protect bio ersity (including plants), and species‐level assessments are essential for identifying the most threatened species that require special and immediate protection measures. Some plants occur in only one place (for instance, a single country) and here we have estimated how many of these ‘endemic’ species have had their threats assessed in each country or close country‐equivalent worldwide. We show that the level of assessment completion is only weakly related to the income of countries or the likely level of threat that species face. The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation ambitiously called for an assessment of the conservation status of all recognised plant taxa by 2020. This target was not met in the short term. Nevertheless, the need for conservation assessments remains urgent as plants go extinct and face increasing threats from human impacts on the biosphere. Here, the completeness of threat assessments for endemic flora in 179 countries or their close equivalents was assessed. To do so, distribution information from the World Checklist of Vascular Plants was combined with assessments collated in the ThreatSearch database. The completeness of assessments was expected to be associated with the objective affluence of countries (measured using inequality‐adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI)) and/or the exposure of their plant species to threats associated with human impacts (measured using Global Human Modification index (GHM)). The number of endemic species per country was also hypothesised to influence the completion of assessments. Overall, 58% of all country‐based endemic species examined have no conservation assessment (127,643 species). Countries' progress toward the completion of threat assessments for endemic plants could not be confidently predicted by IHDI, GHM or the richness of endemic plant flora. The shortfall in threat assessments identified here restricts national regulation of actions which imperil plant species, with particular consequences for endemic plant species subject to local laws. Some nations with high IHDI scores (i.e. wealthier nations) are not systematically assessing extinction risk in their endemic species. Scarce funding should be directed to global hotspots of endemism with few available resources for assessment.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-06-2023
DOI: 10.1111/NPH.18999
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 23-04-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.04.21.052464
Abstract: Although trees are key to ecosystem functioning, many forests and tree species across the globe face strong threats. Preserving areas of high bio ersity is a core priority for conservation however, different dimensions of bio ersity and varied conservation targets make it difficult to respond effectively to this challenge. Here, we ( i ) identify priority areas for global tree conservation using comprehensive coverage of tree ersity based on taxonomy, phylogeny, and functional traits and ( ii ) compare these findings to existing protected areas and global bio ersity conservation frameworks. We find that ca . 51% of the top-priority areas for tree bio ersity are located in current protected areas. The remaining half top-priority areas are subject to moderate to high human pressures, indicating conservation actions are needed to mitigate these human impacts. Our findings emphasize the effectiveness of using tree conservation priority areas for future global conservation planning.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 17-11-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.11.14.382846
Abstract: Both historical and contemporary environmental conditions determine present bio ersity patterns, but their relative importance is not well understood. One way to disentangle their relative effects is to assess how different dimensions of beta- ersity relate to past climatic changes, i.e., taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional compositional dissimilarity, and their components generated by replacement of species, lineages and traits (turnover) and richness changes (nestedness). Here, we quantify global patterns of each of these aspects of beta- ersity among neighboring sites for angiosperm trees using the most extensive global database of tree species-distributions (43,635 species). We found that temperature change since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was the major influence on both turnover and nestedness components of beta- ersity, with a negative correlation to turnover and a positive correlation to nestedness. Moreover, phylogenetic and functional nestedness was higher than expected from taxonomic beta- ersity in regions that experienced large temperature changes since the LGM. This pattern reflects relatively greater losses of phylogenetic and functional ersity in species-poor assemblages, possibly caused by phylogenetically and functionally selective species extinction and recolonization during glacial-interglacial oscillations. Our results send a strong warning that rapid anthropogenic climate change is likely to result in a long-lasting phylogenetic and functional compositional simplification, potentially impairing forest ecosystem functioning.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-06-2022
DOI: 10.1111/ECOG.06142
Abstract: The Darwinian shortfall, i.e. the lack of knowledge of phylogenetic relationships, significantly impedes our understanding of evolutionary drivers of global patterns of bio ersity. Spatial bias in the Darwinian shortfall, where phylogenetic knowledge in some regions is more complete than others, could undermine eco‐ and biogeographic inferences. Yet, spatial biases in phylogenetic knowledge for major groups – such as plants – remain poorly understood. Using data for 337 023 species (99.7%) of seed plants (Spermatophyta), we produced a global map of phylogenetic knowledge based on regional data and tested several potential drivers of the observed spatial variation. Regional phylogenetic knowledge was defined as the proportion of the regional seed plant flora represented in GenBank's nucleotide database with phylogenetically relevant data. We used simultaneous autoregressive models to explain variation in phylogenetic knowledge based on three bio ersity variables (species richness, range size and endemism) and six socioeconomic variables representing funding and accessibility. We compared observed patterns and relationships to established patterns of the Wallacean shortfall (the lack of knowledge of species distributions). We found that the Darwinian shortfall is strongly and significantly related to the macroecological distribution of species' range sizes. Small‐ranged species were significantly less likely to have phylogenetic data, leading to a concentration of the Darwinian shortfall in species‐rich, tropical countries where range sizes are small on average. Socioeconomic factors were less important, with significant but quantitatively small effects of accessibility and funding. In conclusion, reducing the Darwinian shortfall and smoothen its spatial bias will require increased efforts to sequence the world's small‐ranged (endemic) species.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 27-09-2022
DOI: 10.1101/2022.09.26.509556
Abstract: The traits of plants determine how they interact with each other and their environment, constituting key knowledge for erse fields. The lack of comprehensive knowledge of plant traits (the “Raunkiærian shortfall”) poses a major, cross-disciplinary, barrier to scientific advancement. Spatial biases in trait coverage may also lead to erroneous conclusions affecting ecosystem management and conservation planning. Thus, there is an urgent need to assess the spatial completeness of plant trait data, understand drivers of geographic biases, and to identify solutions for filling regional gaps. Here, we leverage a comprehensive set of regional species checklists for vascular plants and trait data for 2,027 traits and 128,929 plant species from the TRY database to assess trait data completeness across the globe. We show that trait data availability in TRY is associated with socioeconomic and biological factors influencing s ling likelihood: trait completeness was positively associated with mean species range size, research expenditure, and human population density and negatively associated with endemism and vascular plant species richness. Integration of a second, regional trait database (AusTraits) more than doubled trait completeness for the continent covered, indicating that the creation and integration of regional databases can rapidly expand trait completeness. The traits of plants determine how they interact with each other and their environment. Our knowledge of plant traits is incomplete, limiting scientific advancement as well as our ability to manage ecosystems and plan conservation actions. We show that there are large biases in trait data availability which are associated with both biological factors (range size, endemism, species richness) and socioeconomic factors (research expenditure, human population density). We also show how regionally-focused efforts can help rapidly expand trait data availability.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 05-04-2023
Abstract: As Earth’s climate has varied strongly through geological time, studying the impacts of past climate change on bio ersity helps to understand the risks from future climate change. However, it remains unclear how paleoclimate shapes spatial variation in bio ersity. Here, we assessed the influence of Quaternary climate change on spatial dissimilarity in taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional composition among neighboring 200-kilometer cells (beta- ersity) for angiosperm trees worldwide. We found that larger glacial-interglacial temperature change was strongly associated with lower spatial turnover (species replacements) and higher nestedness (richness changes) components of beta- ersity across all three bio ersity facets. Moreover, phylogenetic and functional turnover was lower and nestedness higher than random expectations based on taxonomic beta- ersity in regions that experienced large temperature change, reflecting phylogenetically and functionally selective processes in species replacement, extinction, and colonization during glacial-interglacial oscillations. Our results suggest that future human-driven climate change could cause local homogenization and reduction in taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional ersity of angiosperm trees worldwide.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 29-01-2014
DOI: 10.1093/JPE/RTT069
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 03-06-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.06.02.128975
Abstract: Trees are of vital importance for ecosystem functioning and services at local to global scales, yet we still lack a detailed overview of the global patterns of tree ersity and the underlying drivers, particularly the imprint of paleoclimate. Here, we present the high-resolution (110 km) worldwide mapping of tree species richness, functional and phylogenetic ersities based on ∼7 million quality-assessed occurrences for 46,752 tree species (80.5% of the estimated total number of tree species), and subsequent assessments of the influence of paleo-climate legacies on these patterns. All three tree ersity dimensions exhibited the expected latitudinal decline. Contemporary climate emerged as the strongest driver of all ersity patterns, with Pleistocene and deeper-time ( 7 years) paleoclimate as important co-determinants, and, notably, with past cold and drought stress being linked to reduced current ersity. These findings demonstrate that tree ersity is affected by paleoclimate millions of years back in time and highlight the potential for tree ersity losses from future climate change.
Location: Norway
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Wolf Eiserhardt.