Phytogeographic Research Articles

The role of climate and plant functional trade-offs in shaping global biome and biodiversity patterns

Aim: Two of the oldest observations in plant geography are the increase in plant diversity from the poles towards the tropics and the global geographic distribution of vegetation physiognomy (biomes). The objective of this paper is to use a process-based vegetation model to evaluate the relationship between modelled and observed global patterns of plant diversity and the geographic distribution of biomes. Location: The global terrestrial biosphere. Methods: We implemented and tested a novel vegetation model aimed at identifying strategies that enable plants to grow and reproduce within particular climatic conditions across the globe. Our model simulates plant survival according to the fundamental ecophysiological processes of water uptake, photosynthesis, reproduction and phenology. We evaluated the survival of an ensemble of 10,000 plant growth strategies across the range of global climatic conditions. For the simulated regional plant assemblages we quantified functional richness, functional diversity and functional identity. Results: A strong relationship was found (correlation coefficient of 0.75) between the modelled and the observed plant diversity. Our approach demonstrates that plant functional dissimilarity increases and then saturates with increasing plant diversity. Six of the major Earth biomes were reproduced by clustering grid cells according to their functional identity (mean functional traits of a regional plant assemblage). These biome clusters were in fair agreement with two other global vegetation schemes: a satellite image classification and a biogeography model (kappa statistics around 0.4). Main conclusions: Our model reproduces the observed global patterns of plant diversity and vegetation physiognomy from the number and identity of simulated plant growth strategies. These plant growth strategies emerge from the first principles of climatic constraints and plant functional trade-offs. Our study makes important contributions to furthering the understanding of how climate affects patterns of plant diversity and vegetation physiognomy from a process-based rather than a phenomenological perspective.

Updated checklist of vascular plants of the Mbaracayu Forest Nature Reserve (Reserva Natural del Bosque Mbaracayu), Paraguay

The Mbaracayu Forest Nature Reserve (Reserva Natural del Bosque Mbaracayu) is one of the last remaining pieces of Atlantic forest remaining in eastern Paraguay, and the flora is composed of a mixture of tropical and temperate elements. We present here an updated checklist of the vascular plants of the Mbaracayu Forest Nature Reserve, which includes 1177 species (with 1 subspecies and 16 varieties) in 139 families and 605 genera. Four hundred and twenty three (423) of these are new records for the Reserve, 195 new records for the province of Canindeyu and 9 (with 1 subspecies) are new published records for Paraguay. Voucher specimens, local and general distribution details are provided for each taxon, and a brief analysis of the diversity and phytogeography of the flora is presented.

Wither Physical Geography: 100 Volumes of the Geographical Review*

The centennial volume of Geographical Review marks a distinct milestone for the discipline of geography in North America. Great editorial leadership, landmark articles, recognition as a flagship journal: all traditions tagged to the Geographical Review. It has been my privilege, as a member of the Editorial Board, to have been part of that enterprise for most of the last quarter-century. I have worked with inspirational editors--Doug McManis (still my favorite, with apologies to), Paul Starrs, Douglas Johnson and Viola Haarmann, and Craig Colten--and learned much from them. But, a la Christopher Keylock (2007), I already knew the difference between whither and wither. Many of the legendary physical geographers and several leading geologists of the twentieth century published in the Geographical Review. The honor roll includes such luminaries as William Morris Davis (both in the Geographical Review and in its predecessor, the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society; see, for example, Davis 1919, 1934), Harlan Bretz (1928), Richard Joel Russell (Russell and Howe 1935), John Hack (1941), Warren Thornthwaite (1948), Luna Leopold (1951), and Kenneth Hare (Hare and Ritchie 1972). However, the work of physical geographers, as the central focus of a research article, has been virtually missing from the pages of the Geographical Review for the last several decades. By my quick count, using titles or abstracts, only 19 of the 382 articles in volumes 86-99 (1986-2009) are on physical geography. Surprisingly, even in the special issue on Doing Fieldwork (DeLyser and Starrs 2001), only one of the fifty-six essays deals primarily with physical geography. Slightly more contributions by physical geographers appeared in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, as Doug McManis supported a thematic issue on Coastal Geomorphology in 1988 and a short-lived series of essays on philosophy and concepts in physical geography (Sherman 1988; see, for example, Nordstrom 1993). And for most of the last twenty-five years only one or two physical geographers at a time have served on the Editorial Board, which currently comprises thirteen members, not including the editor, the two associate editors, and the book review editor, all of whom are human geographers. So the modern circumstance raises several questions that I will attempt to address here: Was there once a stronger presence of physical geography in the Geographical Review? If so, why has that presence waned? And what might the answers to the preceding questions portend for the journal's future? Much of the change of content in the pages of the Geographical Review is reflected from larger disciplinary forces that altered the landscape of North American geography through the mid-twentieth century. This stems from the disciplinary autophobia espoused by Richard Hartshorne in 1939 under the guise of chorography and regional geography (neatly, but unfortunately not fatally, taken to task in Sauer 1956, 294-295). The decades-long focus on regionalism did great damage to the discipline as a whole (see, for example, Hartshorne 1962), but it dramatically undermined physical geography in general and geomorphology in particular (Butzer 1989). For instance, Hartshorne rejected the study of geomorphological processes as being nongeographical ([1939] 1961, 423-424), and many geography departments in the United States endorsed that rejection via their hiring policies. Therefore, that part of the physical geography community that might have been especially well poised to exploit the quantitative revolution was largely absent from academic geography. It is noteworthy that Hartshorne considered both climatology and biogeography--plant geography in the original--to be safely in the realm of his systematic geography ([1939] 1961, 78-79). Nevertheless, the middle of the twentieth century must be considered a dark period for physical geography in general. Certainly there was a marked distinction in the content of academic geography journals, including the Geographical Review and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, as physical geography appeared less and less often in their pages. …

TROPAEOLUM SECTION CHILENSIA: AN OVERVIEW

The species of Tropaeolum sect. Chilensia Sparre, are discussed. Their phytogeography, ecology, evolution and pollination are considered. Photographs of habitats, and of most of the species taken in the wild, are shown. A synopsis of all the species in the section, and a new arrangement of subsections is provided.

Essay on the geography of plants

Essay on the geography of plants

Using Paleontology to Explore the Geography of Plants and Animals

In a very readable, one could even say fast-paced, text, Dennis McCarthy melds paleontology and geology to explain the geography of plants and animals. If you have not been astonished at these distributions, you will be once you get into this book. McCarthy, a research associate of the Buffalo (NY) Museum of Science, begins with the adventurous nineteenth-century naturalists Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace, and, at the turn of that century, Alfred Wegener. Darwin and Wallace, of course, made pristine collections of both living and fossil organisms from a variety of habitats and deduced that natural selection operated on the survival of populations much as familiar agricultural breeding operated on livestock and crops. Wegener proposed that the interesting jigsaw puzzle fit of the Atlantic coasts of Africa and South America resulted from these continents drifting apart, over millions of years, from a parent landmass. Most geologists and paleontologists, convinced of the immobility of great land masses, denounced this. Wegener perished in a blizzard on the Greenland ice cap while collecting meteorological data. Decades later, with vast amounts of data on the seafloor gathered for World War II naval movements, the presence of upwelling magma along deep underwater ridges was recognized, providing the mechanism for continental drift and persuading scientists of Wegener’s hypothesis. McCarthy describes the geological history of our continents and their progenitors, Pangaea and especially Gondwana. He explains the difference between deep but narrow straits persisting for millions of years, such as that marking Wallace’s Line off Australia, and wider but relatively shallow seas such as Bering Strait that periodically became land when sea levels fell. These and their reverse, the isthmuses such as Panama that rose to link continents, explain the paleontological record of relatively sudden appearances and extinctions as animals and plants crossed into previously isolated territories. Islands, both in oceans and remnant land habitats, could be golden opportunities for speciation into new niches— Darwin’s famous Galapagos finches—or pressures for smaller size: pygmy mammoths and possibly pygmy hominids on the island of Flores (the recent discovery popularized as “hobbits”). Updating on Darwin’s finches, by the contemporary biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant, indicates another theme: population differentiation can occur through learned behavior, not necessarily genetic changes. Galapagos finches learn their songs from their fathers, and females avoid mating with males singing a “foreign” song; when finches colonize a new location, a variant song may develop and inhibit mating with the ancestral population (p. 53). McCarthy’s last two chapters discuss how biogeographical principles may illuminate human history. Perhaps because I am an anthropologist, these chapters seem to me weaker than the preceding ones on geologic and biological data. McCarthy relies heavily on Jared Diamond in these chapters, accepting (pp. 168–72) Diamond’s argument that Eurasians overcame societies in the southern hemisphere because temperate-latitude Eurasia was initially, at the end of the Pleistocene, stocked with domesticable plants and animals, and communication A. B. Kehoe Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413, USA

Plant geography upon the basis of functional traits: an example from eastern North American trees

Plant geographers have sought for decades to describe and predict the geographic distribution of vegetation types on the basis of plant function and its relationship with the abiotic environment. Traditionally this has been accomplished using categorical representations such as plant functional types. Increasingly, plant functional ecologists have sought to refine categorical functional types via quantitative functional traits in order to understand the ecological implications of trade-offs in plant form and function. Fewer works have focused upon testing whether commonly measured functional traits enhance our understanding of plant biogeography broadly and the geographic distribution of vegetation types in particular. Here we combine a continental-scale forest inventory data set containing 18 111 plots with a plant functional trait data set to ask: (1) Is there a strong relationship between the abiotic environment and the distribution of functional trait values in forest inventory plots? And (2) can different Holdridge life zones be distinguished upon the basis of their functional trait distributions? The results show geographic patterns of functional trait distributions that are often strongly correlated with climate and also show that the Holdridge life zones in the study area can be differentiated using a combination of functional traits.

Towards a corporeal aesthetics of plants: Ethnographies of embodied appreciation along the wildflower trail

This paper argues for the application of ethnographic practice, specifically participant observation and semi-structured interviewing, in the development of a corporeal aesthetics of flora. The study is characterized as an ethnography of botanists and, building upon emerging work in cultural ecology and human–plant geographies, is situated within the proposed context of cultural botany. During the Southwest Australian spring wildflower season between August and October of 2009 I conducted interviews with professional and amateur botanists, as well wildflower enthusiasts and tourists, at two places of remarkable floristic diversity: the Lesueur-Eneabba region and the Fitzgerald River National Park. Interview transcripts suggest the possibility of a corporeal aesthetics as a postcolonial countermeasure to the predominantly visual, scientific construction of the aesthetic value of wild flora.

Translocal Ecologies: The Norfolk Broads, the “Natural,” and the International Phytogeographical Excursion, 1911

What we consider "nature" is always historical and relational, shaped in contingent configurations of representational and social practices. In the early twentieth century, the English ecologist A.G. Tansley lamented the pervasive problem of international misunderstandings concerning the nature of "nature." In order to create some consensus on the concepts and language of ecological plant geography, Tansley founded the International Phytogeographical Excursion, which brought together leading plant geographers and botanists from North America and Europe. The first IPE in August 1911 started with the Norfolk Broads. It was led by Marietta Pallis, Tansley's former student at Cambridge. This trip and the work of Pallis, neglected in other accounts of this early period of the history of ecology, influenced the relations between Tansley and important American ecologists H.C. Cowles and F.E. Clements. Understanding "place" as a network of relations, our regional focus shows how taking international dialogue, travel and interchange into account enriches understanding of ecological practice.

Plant Geography Upon the Basis of Functional Traits: An Example from Eastern North American Trees

Plant Geography Upon the Basis of Functional Traits: An Example from Eastern North American Trees

Tundra to Tropics: the Floristic Plant Geography of North America

Tundra to Tropics: the Floristic Plant Geography of North America

A contribution by A. A. Yunatov to the knowledge of the vegetation of Xinjiang (to his 100th anniversary)

Field routes of A. A. Yunatov in the Xinjing Uygur Autonomous Region (West China), carried out by him in 1957—1959, were restored on the basis of the archive data. The description of the vegetation cover of Dzungaria (North Xinjing), Kashgaria (South Xinjing), mountain systems of the East Tien Shan, the West Kunlun, the Mongolian Altai, Frontier Dzungarian mountains is compiled after Yunatov’s field notes. His contribution to botanical geography of this region and the Central Asia as a whole is shown.

A New Species of Asplenium L. from the Lower Cretaceous Changcai Formation in Yanbian Area, Jilin, China

The living family of Aspleniaceae might be one of the biggest families of ferns.The Genus among it is diversified and widely distributed in tropical-temperate zones,especially in the tropical and subtropical areas which is recognized as the distribution center.Confessed earliest fossil specimens of Asplenium Linn.were found from Lower Cretaceous of Northeast Asia and Far East of Russia,being one of the new elements in Cretaceous in the Siberian-Canadian Phyto-geographic Realm.Based on the comparative studies of in situ spores between the fertile frond fossils collected from the early Cretaceous Changcai Formation in Yanbian area of Jilin,China,and the living fertile fronds of Asplenium trichomanes L.,the fertile frond fossils and its sterile frond fossils are definitely assigned to the genus Asplenium L.Furthermore,through the comparison to the known species of fossil Asplenium,a new species of Asplenium is recongnized,i.e.Asplenium changcaium Sun et Liu,sp.nov.Since the well preserved spores in situ of the present new species,it would be beneficial for the researches on the evolution of Asplenium,or even Aspleniaceae.The new species is described as follows:Order:Filicales;Family:Aspleniacea;Genus:Asplenium Linn.,1753;Species:Asplenium changcaium Sun et Liu,sp.nov.(Fig.2-1～8,Fig.3-1～7)Holotype:The specimen JLC030344 illustrated on Fig.2-1 has been chosen as holotype.Paratype:Both the specimen JLC030359 illustrated on Fig.2-5 and the specimen JLC030447 illustrated on Fig.2-7 are chosen as paratypes.Additional specimen:JLC030343,JLC030345,JLC030346,JLC030348,JLC030442,JLC030358,JLC030356,JLC030443,JLC030353.Repository:the Research Center of Paleontology and Stratigraphy,Jilin University,China.Type locality:Nanyang Coal-mine,Helong County,Jilin Province.Type horizon:Changcai Formation,Lower Cretaceous(Aptian).Etymology:Changcai refers to the stratigraphic horizon,the Lower Cretaceous Changcai Formation in Yanbian area,Jilin Province.

Floristic characteristics of the wetland sites on dry southern slopes of the Alborz Mts., N. Iran: The role of altitude in floristic composition

The Alborz Mountains, the second largest range in Iran, is, on its southern slopes, mainly covered by steppe vegetation. These dry slopes also include ‘green islands’ of wetland. Floristic diversity and environmental characteristics of 45 of these little-studied wetland sites have been assessed along an altitudinal gradient using one-way ANOVA, Pearson r and detrended correspondence analysis/canonical correspondence analysis (DCA/CCA) analyses. The wetlands proved to be of conservation importance with 310 plant taxa, including 35 endemics or subendemics. Predictably, and consistent with the phytosociological classification of Klein [2001. La végétation altitudinale de L’Alborz Central (Iran): Entre les régions Irano-Touranienne et Euro-sibérienne. Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, Téhéran], there were parallel changes in vegetation both within wetlands and the surrounding steppes and in DCA/CCA analyses altitude appeared to be the primary determinant of floristic composition. Upper mountain wetlands are particularly species-rich and contain many endemics and other species of a narrow phytogeographical distribution. Soil pH declined with altitude, perhaps in part as a consequence of low salinity (and high pH) in the mountains. Consistent with the work of Raunkiaer [1934. The life forms of plants and statistical plant geography. Clarendon Press, Oxford], hemicryptophytes are mainly restricted to upper mountain areas. Though correlated both directly with altitude and with correlation in DCA/CCA plots, phytogeography, life-form and soil pH fail to adequately explain the ecological processes that maintain the altitudinal gradient in vegetation types and species composition. Further studies on site productivity, soil chemistry and climate-related variables are, therefore, on-going in an attempt to understand more fully the ecosystem processes maintaining the diversity of these important wetland sites.

Evaluation of the terrestrial carbon cycle, future plant geography and climate‐carbon cycle feedbacks using five Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs)

AbstractThis study tests the ability of five Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs), forced with observed climatology and atmospheric CO2, to model the contemporary global carbon cycle. The DGVMs are also coupled to a fast ‘climate analogue model’, based on the Hadley Centre General Circulation Model (GCM), and run into the future for four Special Report Emission Scenarios (SRES): A1FI, A2, B1, B2. Results show that all DGVMs are consistent with the contemporary global land carbon budget. Under the more extreme projections of future environmental change, the responses of the DGVMs diverge markedly. In particular, large uncertainties are associated with the response of tropical vegetation to drought and boreal ecosystems to elevated temperatures and changing soil moisture status. The DGVMs show more divergence in their response to regional changes in climate than to increases in atmospheric CO2 content. All models simulate a release of land carbon in response to climate, when physiological effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on plant production are not considered, implying a positive terrestrial climate‐carbon cycle feedback. All DGVMs simulate a reduction in global net primary production (NPP) and a decrease in soil residence time in the tropics and extra‐tropics in response to future climate. When both counteracting effects of climate and atmospheric CO2 on ecosystem function are considered, all the DGVMs simulate cumulative net land carbon uptake over the 21st century for the four SRES emission scenarios. However, for the most extreme A1FI emissions scenario, three out of five DGVMs simulate an annual net source of CO2 from the land to the atmosphere in the final decades of the 21st century. For this scenario, cumulative land uptake differs by 494 Pg C among DGVMs over the 21st century. This uncertainty is equivalent to over 50 years of anthropogenic emissions at current levels.

Swedish plantgeog-raphy Contents

Swedish plantgeog-raphy Contents

Origins of native vascular plants of antarctica: Comments from a historical phytogeography viewpoint

The article provides an overview of the problem of origin of the only native vascular plants of Antarctica, Deschampsia antartica (Poaceae) and Colobanthus quitensis (Caryophyllaceae), from the viewpoint of modern historical phytogeography and related fields of science. Some authors suggested the Tertiary relict status of these plants in Antarctica, while others favour their recent Holocene immigration. Direct data (fossil or molecular genetic ones) for solving this controversy is still lacking. However, there is no convincing evidence supporting the Tertiary relict status of these plants in Antarctica. Most probably D. antarctica and C. quitensis migrated to Antarctica in the Holocene or Late Pleistocene (last interglacial?) through bird-aided long-distance dispersal. It should be critically tested by (1) appropriate methods of molecular phylogeography, (2) molecular clock methods, if feasible, (3) direct paleobotanical studies, (4) paleoclimatic reconstructions, and (5) comparison with cases of taxa with similar distribution/dispersal patterns. The problem of the origin of Antarctic vascular plants is a perfect model for integration of modern methods of molecular phylogeography and phylogenetics, population biology, paleobiology and paleogeography for solving a long-standing enigma of historical plant geography and evolution.

The Austral floristic realm revisited

AbstractThe classification of the Earth’s flora into floristic regions has been the major goal of plant geography since the 19th century. A detailed revision of 19th and 20th century classifications is presented herein, with particular emphasis on the delimitation of the Austral floristic realm. A comparison between Chile, New Zealand, and the Cape Floristic Region is made at the genus level. Using the vascular flora of these biogeographical regions, the analysis revises previous attempts to define the Austral realm, while also assessing differences made by changes in taxonomic delimitations from recent molecular phylogenetic studies. The results indicate that the Austral floristic realm can nowadays be better described as a circum‐Antarctic generalized track, composed of some 60 genera and 15 families restricted to South America and Australasia, possibly including South Africa.

Alexander von Humboldt?The Explorer and the Scientist

Abstract On 5 June 1799, Alexander von Humboldt, explorer and scientist, left La Coruña in Spain to go to Cumaná, Venezuela. On 3 August 1804, he arrived again in Bordeaux, France. This article deals with five aspects of this famous journey: the itinerary of the American journey; scientific aims: Humboldt’s journeys and scientific activities were two sides of the same coin; methodology: Humboldt explained in detail his positivistic scientific methodology in his treatise On the isothermal lines and the distribution of heat on the earth (1817); achievements and results: the old Humboldt claimed only three merits: the geography of plants, the theory of isothermal lines, and geomagnetism; the isotherms as a case study: Humboldt spoke at great length about errors, limits, and advantages of the method of mean values.

Екатерина Ивановна Рачковская (к 80-летию со дня рождения)

On September 17, 2007 celebrated the anniversary by Katherine Raczkovskaya — known geobotanist, botanical geographer, cartographer, specialist in the study of vegetation of arid regions, doctor of biological sciences. E. I. is one of the best connoisseurs of vegetation of the steppes and deserts of Asia. Her expedition routes cover vast areas of the inner part of Eurasian continent: Kazakhstan, Middle Asia, Mongolia, China. The scientific interests of E. I. manifold —structure of vegetation, mapping and zoning of vegetation, botanical geography, ecology, etc.