Strategy For Plant Conservation Research Articles

Monitoring plant diversity in wind farm areas: An approach to early detection of alien plant species

AbstractThe presence of alien plant species in disturbed habitats is a well‐studied subject, however, the contribution of wind farm projects to alien plant invasion is often overlooked in environmental impact assessment. The present study tests a survey method for the assessment of plant diversity and the detection of alien plant invasion in two wind farm areas in Romania. Over 5 years, we recorded plant species incidence data in disturbed and undisturbed plots, making one visit per growing season each year. Using several plant community indicators and methods, such as species richness, beta diversity, non‐metric multidimensional scaling, and multinomial species classification, we reliably detected plant species assemblage, including 26 alien plant species among the 608 recorded. Disturbed plots harbor a higher number of alien plant species, supporting the hypothesis that disturbances caused by wind farms reduce habitats' resilience to alien plant invasions. Despite the presence of habitat specialist plant species in certain plots, the community of alien plants did not show a clear preference for disturbed or undisturbed plots. The results underscore the importance of surveying the wind farms beyond the disturbed sites through regular monitoring to accurately assess their impact on plant diversity and detect alien plant invasions. The regular monitoring of all plant species during growing seasons will provide useful data for informing conservation strategies for native plants, including the control and eradication of alien species in early invasion stages.

Coupling of leaf economic and hydraulic traits of desert plants of different life forms in the Ebinur Lake Basin

The functional traits of leaves and their internal trade-offs have been the focus of ecologists as a powerful basis for revealing plant physiology and function, and ecological strategies. The consistency of the coupled relationship between leaf economic traits and hydraulic traits among trees, shrubs, and herbs in similar ecological environments has seldom been systematically explored. We explored coupling in desert plants of different life forms and their response to the soil environment in two tree species (Populus euphratica Oliv. and Haloxylon ammodendron (C. A. Mey.) Bunge)), the shrub species (Nitraria tangutorum Bobrov and Halimodendron halodendron (Pall.) Dum. Cours.), and herbaceous species (Alhagi sparsifolia Shap. and Apocynum venetum L.) in the transition zone of the desert in the Ebinur Lake Basin, Xinjiang, China. Leaf and soil samples were collected to determine plant leaf economic traits, hydraulic traits, and soil factors. Regarding leaf economic traits, trees had higher in leaf mass per area and leaf thickness (LT). The leaf nitrogen and phosphorus contents were higher in shurbs than those in trees and herbs. Regarding hydraulic traits, shrubs had higher palisade parenchyma thickness (PT) and vein density (VD), whereas herbs had higher stomatal length (SL), spongy parenchyma thickness (ST), and leaf water potential (Ψ). In herbs, SL, ST, and Ψ had advantages, whereas PT/ST was the lowest. This study revealed an association between leaf economic and hydraulic traits in plants of different life forms in a similar ecological environment and provides a scientific basis for plant conservation strategies and ecosystem services value assessment and use in arid zones.

Potential contribution of urban roadside plant nurseries to forest plant conservation and human well-being in the face of climate change, Uganda

ABSTRACT Plant diversity is one of the fundamental cornerstones for human well-being and sustainable development in countries where household livelihoods are highly dependent on land resources. Given their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and increasing threat to plant diversity sustainability efforts to conserve plant diversity through ex-situ strategies like plant nurseries management are crucial for those countries. We surveyed 70 roadside plant nurseries across Kampala District, to understand their contribution to plant conservation and human livelihoods in the face of global change. One hundred and nine species representing 55 families including exotics and indigenous were recorded. The most frequent indigenous species were Musanga cecropioides, Elaeis guinensis, Maesopsis eminii, and the endangered Encephalartos hildebrandtii. Over 94% of the respondents depended on plant nursery business for their economic needs. Over 92% of the respondents lacked the technical capacity to manage plant nurseries for conservation and as a business. Yet with proper management, the plant nurseries can enhance plant conservation, urban forestry development, and act as green businesses. Hence, contributing to livelihood improvement of the low-income urban households; and achieving assisted plant migration as an adaptation strategy for plant conservation in the face of global change.

In Vitro Conservation of Mexican Garlic Varieties by Minimal Growth

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) is one of the 30 crops that are essential for world food; therefore, its conservation should be considered a priority. There are two main plant conservation strategies: in situ and ex situ conservation. Both strategies are important; nevertheless, ex situ field conservation is affected by biotic and abiotic factors. A complementary strategy to preserve garlic germplasm in the medium term is through in vitro culture by minimal growth. The aim of this study was to evaluate the in vitro conservation of three Mexican garlic varieties by minimal growth. Garlic plants obtained from in vitro garlic bulbs were preserved in six culture media at 25, 18, and 5 °C. A randomized design was used and an analysis of the variance of the survival, contamination, and shoot height of the explants was performed at 30, 60, 90, 180, 270, and 365 days of culture. The results showed that the in vitro conservation of Pebeco, Tacátzcuaro Especial, and Huerteño garlic varieties was optimally obtained for one year at 5 °C in a basal Murashige and Skoog (MS) culture medium with 68.46 g L−1 sucrose and 36.43 g L−1 sorbitol. Thus, the achieved protocol can be adapted to other varieties of garlic for medium-term storage in germplasm banks.

Fostering in situ conservation of wild relatives of forage crops.

Most plant conservation strategies generally overlook the intra-specific genetic diversity of crop gene pools. Focusing on forage crops and their wild relatives, we present a novel approach to address the conservation of these species on meadows. Two-thirds of Swiss agricultural land is green land, mostly used for forage purposes, and their genetic diversity is being threatened. We focused here on eight plant associations gathering at least 18 taxa considered priority crop wild relatives of forage crops. Since 2020, about 1,217 high-quality surfaces (representing 1,566 hectares) nationwide have been integrated into an innovative auction-based policy instrument dedicated to conserving these populations. Here, we report the benefits and hurdles of implementing this bottom-up approach and try to estimate the quality of conservation of the forage plants' CWR gene pool. Although we focus on the Swiss case, our approach to in situ conservation offers opportunities to effectively guide conservation in other contexts. We also discuss possible ways to improve CWR conservation policy, particularly the need to better consider the populations and habitat levels.

Community regeneration based on the distribution and population structure of Syringa fauriei H. Lév. (Oleaceae), a rare and endemic plant in Korea

To meet the specific targets of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation of 2020 (GSPC-2020), data of species traits for each plant species are investigated. This study investigated a Korean endemic plant (Syringa fauriei H. Lev.) in terms of its current distribution across the southern-central regions of the Korean peninsula, vegetative conditions in natural habitats, distributional characteristics, and population structure. Syringa fauriei was located at the river borders, where vegetative conditions were either limestone and non-limestone zones. The upstream limestone zones offered suitable areas for the distribution of S. fauriei and were epicenters of their distribution. The mature individuals produced seeds. The population structure displayed a stable, reverse J-shape, consisting of an abundance of seedlings and young plants with a few fertile plants that supplied the seeds for population growth; this was termed the ‘ecological founder effect’. In the limestone zones, the S. fauriei community formed on the borders of streams with water flow, implying that the cycle of community generation, growth, and extinction was repeated according to the stream disturbance dynamics. For S. fauriei conservation, naturality of stream environments should be maintained.

WFO-IDs: Unique Identifiers for All Known Plants Managed by the World Flora Online

The World Flora Online (WFO) project (Borsch et al. 2020) was initiated in 2012 in response to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation*1, "To create an online flora of all known plants by 2020" (Wyse Jackson and Kennedy 2009). A WFO Consortium of over 40 international institutions has been formed. The World Flora Online Public Portal*2 is built upon a taxonomic backbone of plant taxonomic data that integrates the International Plant Name Index (IPNI)*3, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP)*4, Tropicos*5, Angiosperm Phylogeny Group 4*6, Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG I 2016), supplemented by the Global Compositae Checklist*7, Solanaceae Source*8, and others. To facilitate the ongoing curation of the WFO backbone, identifiers called WFO-IDs have been created for each of the over 1.59 million names included in WFO. WFO-IDs are comprehensive for all known plants, both vascular and non-vascular except algae. IPNI-IDs are limited to vascular plants and do not give the current taxonomic status of the name. WFO-IDs also cover invalid designations, i.e., some effectively published “names” like orthographic variants that have been used in taxonomic literature, so that their invalid status is made explicit. WFO IDs follow FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Relationships between WFO-IDs are also recorded by the WFO Taxonomic Backbone, including synonymy and homonymy, and are accessible via the WFO Portal. WFO is continuously updating the taxonomic backbone by engagement of new plant Taxonomic Expert Networks (TENs) focused on selected plant groups. WFO also includes over 500,000 descriptive data items gathered from digital floras and monographs, and other sources. Descriptive data can be text descriptions, images, geographic distributions, identification keys, phylogenetic trees, threat status, lifeform or habitat. Descriptive data records are all assigned a WFO-ID, if they are new to WFO, by a name matching process with the WFO Taxonomic Backbone. A new tool called Rhakhis (Hyam et al. 2022), developed at Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, is used to manage the WFO Taxonomic Backbone data and includes APIs to access the versioned backbone data. This presentation will review the origins and history of WFO-IDs and how they are being used for the World Flora Online.

Environmental variables drive medicinal plant composition and distribution in various forest types of subtropical region in Pakistan

Analyzing the ecological distribution patterns of medicinal plants under the influence of environmental variables can provide important information about how these plants are affected by environmental factors. This analysis can also serve as a conceptual foundation for medicinal plant management strategies. We examined the composition and distribution of medicinal plants as well as how and which environmental factors influence the plant communities in subtropical forest types from Pakistan. 11 forest sites over the course of two years (2020−2021) were sampled, measuring 10 environmental variables and documenting medicinal plants that were present in the study area. Plants data viz.; cover, density, and frequency were recorded from randomly selected sites through quadrat method. Soil parameters i.e., pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, electrical conductance, potassium and soil organic matter were recorded from each site. After calculating importance value index for each species, the data was analyzed utilizing a multivariate ordination approach. The most prevalent family observed during present investigations were Asteraceae followed by Fabaceae and Solanaceae. The life form spectra outcomes exhibited the predominance of the therophyte species, followed by chamaephyte species. The results of the regression analysis exhibit that soil organic matter, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus have a positive influence on medicinal plant richness, while electrical conductance (EC) and soil pH have a negative influence. Canonical correspondence analysis revealed that the soil parameters and anthropogenic factors (grazing pressure, land degradation, over-collection) had a significant (p ≤ 0.002) effect on the distribution of medicinal plants. The seasonal pattern of the life cycle revealed its peak during the spring season (41%), followed by monsoon (32%). The leaf size spectra results showed dominance of microphylls, over nanophylls and leptophylls. The results would be significant in establishing plant conservation strategies in Pakistan, especially due to over-exploitation of medicinal plants and the negative effects of climate change make it imperative to protect them on prior basis.

Global shortfalls in threat assessments for endemic flora by country

Societal Impact StatementPlants are fundamental to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and are key to human livelihoods. To protect plant diversity, systematic approaches to conservation assessment are needed. Many nations have legislation or other policy instruments that seek to protect biodiversity (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.Summary 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.

Using stored seeds for plant translocation: The seed bank perspective

Billions of seeds from wild species are currently stored in hundreds of conservation seed banks around the world. Plant translocation from these seeds is a key conservation priority and one of the targets of the UN's Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. How these seeds are used for plant translocation and what obstacles seed banks encounter has not been investigated. To explore this issue, we circulated a questionnaire across international networks, complemented with a literature review on plant translocation from stored seeds. We received responses from 104 seed banks in 34 countries. Just over 70 % had previously used their collections for plant translocation, with a median of 12 translocations per seed bank. The main limitations for translocation were identified as “funding” and “resources”, with a lack of seeds and expertise also mentioned as obstacles. Only 11 seed banks had no constraints on their ability to carry out plant translocation. With 96 % of respondents indicating they would like to carry out future plant translocations, there is a willingness by seed banks to use their collections more extensively, but a lack of funding and resource availability is limiting the full potential for translocation activities. The literature review identified 12 articles which specified that seed bank stored seeds were used for plant translocation, suggesting that plant translocations from ex situ seeds are rarely published in the scientific literature. Our results indicate that if nations are to achieve their international conservation targets, funding and resources for the use of banked seeds should be prioritised.

Making a greener planet: nature documentaries promote plant awareness.

Plants underpin life on Earth and are essential to human existence. Alarmingly, almost 40% of plant species are under threat of extinction, with plants that are not directly useful to humans being particularly vulnerable. Plant diversity and its untapped resources require urgent protection to safeguard our future, but conservation initiatives are biased towards mammals and birds. Plant awareness disparity, formerly known as plant blindness, describes our tendency to ignore plant life and has been suggested to play a crucial role in the bias against funding and support for plant conservation programmes. Previous studies indicate that nature documentaries can generate shifts in audience awareness of animal species by providing vicarious connections to nature. Here, we investigated whether the plant-focused popular BBC show Green Planet had a similar effect for plants and stimulated audience engagement for information after the broadcast. Online searches for further information were considered a form of engagement for evaluation of the interest of the audience in plants portrayed in Green Planet episodes. The big data activities (Google search engine and Wikipedia pageviews trends) related to the plants mentioned in Green Planet episodes were examined over the period covering the broadcast of the show in UK. Analyses indicate that Green Planet generated increased awareness and stimulated audience engagement for further information about plants featured in the show, with audience reaction driven by the screen time. Natural history films can promote plant awareness, and culturomic tools can be used to assess their impact on the general public, potentially also to inform plant conservation strategies. These are promising findings as we strive to increase public awareness of the value of plant life.

First insular population of the critically endangered Cistus heterophyllus subsp. carthaginensis on Cabrera Archipelago National Park (Balearic Islands, Spain)

Cistus heterophyllus subsp. carthaginensis is considered one of the most endangered plants of Spain and has been object to many conservation programs and research projects. Until now, only two small spots were located in Europe: a population of one self-incompatible specimen was found in Valencia and another small population in Cartagena, disturbed by human impact and hybridization with close-relatives. Therefore, the conservation of this taxon has been one of the most defeating issues in the current plant conservation strategies of the Mediterranean workgroups. In this study, we report, describe and cense a new population of this taxon located at the furthest accessible area of the isle of Cabrera Gran in Cabrera Archipelago National Park. The population contains 59 individuals of C. heterophyllus subsp. carthaginensis, the most abundant known population of this species, with a high representation of young individuals (83%). However, some threats are currently compromising the stability of this population: the presence of Cistus albidus in surrounding areas is producing hybrids (Cistus × clausonii) and the high abundance of rats and rabbits is affecting the population recruitment. For this reason, urgent conservation actions must be designed to protect and enhance this population. Overall, this new finding offers new insights on the distribution and conservation strategies of this species.

Ex situ conservation of threatened higher plants in Chinese botanical gardens

Ex situ conservation of botanical gardens is one of the important approaches to protect threatened plants. Through 52 investigated botanical gardens which had the major function of ex situ conservation, we analyzed the status and problems of ex situ conservation of China’s threatened higher plants based on the Threatened Species List of China’s Higher Plants, and proposed some suggestions for botanical gardens’ future development. During the investigation, we found that 1754 threatened species preserved in 52 botanical gardens, including 252 Critically Endangered (CR) species, 589 Endangered (EN) species and 913 Vulnerable (VU) species. These botanical gardens had protected over 45 % of known China’s threatened species, and reached about 60 % of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) Target 8. However, we also revealed that botanical gardens had low coverage of threatened species, especially bryophytes and pteridophyte. About 78 % of ex situ conservation threatened species were existed in less than 5 botanical gardens. Distribution of ex situ conservation of threatened species was inconsistent with their natural habitat. Furthermore, botanical gardens did not have enough capacity to cope with the crisis of species extinction. Therefore, we suggest that botanical gardens should strengthen information management, increase the proportion of threatened species, attach great importance to the threatened species with few collections and low safety, and make a positive and reasonable response to the threat status of plants.

Distribution and conservation of vanilla crop wild relatives: the value of local community engagement for biodiversity research

Natural vanilla is a high-value crop with demand increasing globally. Crop wild relatives (CWR) represent valuable agrobiodiversity and are prioritized in the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. Vanilla species are naturally rare with historically infrequent botanical collections. Despite their importance as CWR, fewer than 10% of Vanilla species have been evaluated for the IUCN Red List. Colombia is a diversity center for Vanilla species, yet many remote regions are lacking detailed floristic characterization. We show that the participation of rural communities in scientific endeavor enhances capacity to register biodiversity. We report two Vanilla species in the under-explored region of the Serranía de las Quinchas in the mid–Magdalena River valley in Colombia, including the first report for Colombia of Vanilla karen-christianae. For this, and the second species, Vanilla dressleri, we present descriptions with photographic botanical illustrations, updated distribution maps, and preliminary conservation status assessment. Both species are of elevated conservation concern, categorized as Endangered – EN: B2a,b(ii,iii,iv,v) following IUCN criteria. Within Colombia, all recorded occurrences for both species fall outside protected areas. Vanilla crop wild relatives in Colombia have urgent conservation needs. The Serranía de las Quinchas is a priority for further botanical exploration for Vanilla, as well as other protected areas with appropriate habitat. In situ conservation should be complemented with ex situ actions. Community participation in biodiversity research is recommended in this and other remote regions as an integral step towards enhancing biodiversity research and community-based conservation.

Harnessing the power of botanical gardens: Evaluating the costs and resources needed for exceptional plant conservation.

PremiseThe effective ex situ conservation of exceptional plants, whether in living collections or cryo‐collections, requires more resources than the conservation of other species. Because of their expertise with rare plants, botanical gardens are well positioned to lead this effort, but a well‐developed strategy requires a clear understanding of the resources needed.MethodsGrant funding was obtained from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support a three‐year project on cryobanking, and to provide smaller grants to 10 other botanical gardens for one‐year projects on either (1) seed behavior studies or (2) the development of protocols for in vitro propagation or cryopreservation.ResultsNine of the partner gardens worked on 19 species (one was unable to continue due to the COVID‐19 pandemic), while the larger project focused on 14 species. A point system was developed for tasks accomplished, and the average costs per point of the larger and smaller projects were similar. Labor accounted for half the costs. Projects focused on species in the Asteraceae and Orchidaceae had lower costs per point than other species.DiscussionBoth large and small projects can contribute to a strategy for exceptional plant conservation for similar costs. Prioritizing species with lower costs could help advance the field while allowing time for work on more difficult species to develop.

The World Flora Online: Summary and Status

The World Flora Online (WFO) project was initiated in 2012 in response to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation – "To create an online flora of all known plants by 2020" (CBD 2010, Wyse Jackson 2013). A WFO Consortium of 50 international institutions and growing has been formed (see Wyse Jackson and Miller (2015) for a historical overview). The World Flora Online Public Portal (www.worldfloraonline.org) was relaunched in July, 2022. It is populated with a taxonomic backbone of plant taxonomic data, which integrates the International Plant Name Index (IPNI), World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP, Govaerts et al. 2022), Tropicos, Angiosperm Phylogeny Group IV (A.P.G. 2016), Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (Schüttpelz 2016) and others supplemented, inter alia, by the Global Compositae Checklist and Solanaceae Source. The WFO taxonomic backbone aims at covering all “effectively published” (Turland 2018) plant names that are in use or found in taxonomic literature and to integrate them into a modern phylogeny-based system of classification (Borsch et al. 2020). To facilitate the ongoing curation of the WFO backbone, identifiers, called WFO-IDs, have been created for 1.4 million names, including both vascular and non-vascular plants. WFO IDs are also cross-referenced to IPNI and WCVP identifiers as well as to the name IDs used in the source databases. WFO is updating the taxonomic backbone by engagement of new plant Taxonomic Expert Networks (TENs) focused on selected plant groups (for an example see Korotkova, this symposium), thus contributing to a transparent and inclusive reorganisation of the taxonomic research community. WFO also includes by now over 600,000 “content” data items gathered from digital floras and monographs, and other sources like International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) threat assessments and the Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) Global Tree Assessment. Content data can be text descriptions, images, geographic distributions, identification keys, phylogenetic trees, as well as atomized trait data like threat status, lifeform or habitat of a taxon. Over 30 digital descriptive datasets have been received from sources such as Flora of Brazil, Flora of South Africa, Flora of China, Flora of North America, Flora of Thailand and many others. WFO aims at clearly showing the original sources to give credit to the authors, both for backbone and content data. Extensive work is required to match the names associated with the submitted descriptions to the names and WFO-IDs in the World Flora Online taxonomic backbone and then merging the descriptive data elements into the WFO Portal. Numerous techniques have been adopted and created to accomplish the data cleaning, standardization and transformation required before descriptive data can be integrated. Among the new tools created is a system called Rhakhis developed at Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (Hyam et al. 2022). Rhakhis is used to manage the WFO taxonomic backbone data including ingestion, editing and export and includes APIs to access the versioned backbone data. This presentation will focus on the current state and plans for the future of the World Flora Online.

Wild plant conservation in Mexico in the 21st century

Twenty-one years have elapsed of the 21st Century and within the framework of the celebration of the 100th volume of Botanical Sciences , it is relevant to assess the progress of the research on conservation and on the activities undertaken for protecting the plants of Mexico, including the complementary in situ and ex situ approaches. By means of a systematic search of scientific articles related to the conservation of the Mexican flora on the Web of Science database, for the 2000–2021 period, we identified different scientific inputs, all showing specific objectives for undertaking conservation activities. The publications that resulted from this search were classified into six categories: (a) Regions and Ecoregions; (b) Communities or Ecosystems; (c) Taxonomic Groups; (d) Species and Populations; (e) Botanical Gardens; and (f) Seed Banks. For these categories, the results are presented under the headings “ in situ conservation” and “ ex situ conservation.” Additionally, we assessed by a random examination, the bibliography used to support touristic development projects. The results show that, despite the wide temporal range considered in this review, and even though there is a vast number of publications related to the characterization of the Mexican biodiversity, the production of scientific work oriented to the development of plant conservation strategies and activities is still scarce. Also evident is the lack of connection and communication among researchers of different disciplines, highlighting the disciplinary or multidisciplinary activities that they undertake. Finally, ten conclusions are presented, and some future research activities are suggested for conserving the Mexican flora.

Gene Flow and Recruitment Patterns among Disjunct Populations of Allocasuarina verticillata (Lam.) L.A.S. Johnson

Allocasuarina verticillata (Lam.) L.A.S. Johnson is a widespread species in south-eastern Australia providing vegetation cover, protecting fragile soils and providing food for birds. Understanding the effects of gene flow on the recruitment patterns, genetic differentiation and structure of fragmented populations provides fundamental guidelines to underpin plant conservation strategies and activities. In this study, four spatially disjunct populations of A. verticillata were sampled to explore the effects of population size, reproductive patterns and pollen and seed dispersal on among-population genetic diversity, genetic differentiation and structure, using field survey and microsatellite marker techniques. It was found that stands of A. verticillata were predominantly sexually reproductive, but asexual reproduction through root suckering was an additional mode of reproduction. The reproductive success of A. verticillata is positively correlated with the effective population size rather than actual population size. The reduction in effective population size and increment of spatial isolation resulted in lower genetic diversity and higher inbreeding coefficient of progenies. Moderate pairwise genetic differentiation and weak genetic structure were identified. The results suggest that exogenous, wind-mediated pollen flow provides some maintenance of genetic diversity in the isolated stands. Seed dispersal appears mainly to be over short distances (i.e., within populations), but the infrequent transport of seeds between disjunct locations cannot be ruled out as another factor that may help maintain genetic diversity.

Prioritizing Plants around the Cross-Border Area of Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia: Integrated Conservation Actions and Sustainable Exploitation Potential

Plants know no political borders and some of them are restricted to small geographical territories of different countries in which they are endemic. In this study, we prioritized plants (PPs) of the cross-border area of Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia that are already threatened or nearly so (PPA), those which occur exclusively on either side of borderline and/or nearby countries (PPB), or those which are uncommon and rare in this region (PPC) with the aim to document in-situ the species-specific risks-threats; offer ex-situ conservation for them as a back-up solution for future re-introductions and sustainable exploitation; and raise public awareness and alertness about the importance of local biodiversity. In the framework of the project Conse-pp, 20 botanical expeditions were performed in 75 selected areas to collect samples and suitable propagation material from 130 PPs (147 accession numbers), also recording all types of threats-identified in-situ for each of them. No ex-situ conservation was detected for 40 PPs worldwide while for another 12 PPs only limited attempts have been made to date. The fully documented PPs are currently maintained under ex- situ conservation and acclimatization in the Balkan Botanic Garden of Kroussia (BBGK). In total, 156 propagation trials (sexual or asexual) have been made for these PPs to develop species-specific propagation protocols. Consequently, the production of new plant stocks raised ex-situ was achieved (n = 3254 individuals; first-time ex-situ conservation for 40 taxa), and this has enabled the establishment of three awareness-raising sites with PPs: (i) 1000 plants of 70 PPs in the newly designed Kardia Botanical Park in Thermi (Greece); (ii) 850 plants of 104 PPs in the phytodiversity awareness spot in BBGK and 130 individual PPs in the Garden of Environmental Awareness; and (iii) 42 plants of 14 PP taxa delivered to the botanic garden of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. This project outlines the necessity of the development of common plant conservation strategies for threatened plants in cross-border areas of neighboring countries and presents an integrated approach allowing for sustainable development and future in-situ protection measures and actions in the studied cross-border area.

Beta Diversity Patterns Unlock the Community Assembly of Woody Plant Communities in the Riparian Zone

Beta diversity refers to changes in community composition across time and space, including species richness and replacement. Few studies have examined beta diversity patterns of riparian vegetation communities in terms of taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional attributes. In this study, we conducted a field survey of woody plant communities in the riparian zone of the Lijiang River Basin in China. We analyze variations in taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional beta diversity, the relative contributions of species richness and replacement to beta diversity and the relationships between beta diversity and environmental distance and geographical distance. The results show that: (1) replacement was the dominant component of taxonomic beta diversity and richness was the dominant component of functional and phylogenetic beta diversity; and (2) dispersal limitation and habitat filtering jointly drive the community assembly of woody plant communities in the riparian zone of the Lijiang River Basin. Therefore, when formulating conservation strategies for woody plants along the Lijiang River riparian zone, improving ecological communities and enhancing species dispersal between communities should be given equal attention. From a taxonomic perspective, it is more suitable to establish several small nature reserves, whereas from phylogenetic and functional perspectives, protection should focus on larger nature reserves.