John White Masters

Predicting the likelihood that non-native species will be introduced into new areas remains one of conservation’s greatest challenges and, consequently, it is necessary to adopt adequate management measures to mitigate the effects of future biological invasions. At present, not much information is available on the areas in which non-native aquatic plant species could establish themselves in the Iberian Peninsula. Species distribution models were used to predict the potential invasion risk of (1) non-native aquatic plant species already established in the peninsula (32 species) and (2) those with the potential to invade the peninsula (40 species). The results revealed that the Iberian Peninsula contains a number of areas capable of hosting non-native aquatic plant species. Areas under anthropogenic pressure are at the greatest risk of invasion, and the variable most related to invasion risk is temperature. The results of this work were used to create the Invasion Risk Atlas for Alien Aquatic Plants in the Iberian Peninsula, a novel online resource that provides information about the potential distribution of non-native aquatic plant species. The atlas and this article are intended to serve as reference tools for the development of public policies, management regimes, and control strategies aimed at the prevention, mitigation, and eradication of non-native aquatic plant species.

The Elaeocarpus is considered the largest genus in the family Elaeocarpaceae. It is commonly called ‘Rudraksha’ in India and has a noteworthy attachment with the Indians, mostly Hindus. The plant is known for its beneficial aspects and supply of various ecosystem services, particularly in medicinal sciences. The present study provides a comprehensive review of the genus Elaeocarpus for its ecosystem services in the context of human wellbeing. A literature survey was conducted from 1970 to 2020 on internet scientific databases such as Scopus, Science Direct, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Web of Science using strings such as, Elaeocarpus, Rudraksha, medicine, conservation, tradition, and services. One hundred two publications were considered for data extraction and finalising the review. Firstly, we classified the ecosystem services under respective classes as provided by MEA (2005), and the remaining benefits that didn’t fit under the classification were presented separately. It has been reported that Rudraksha delivers all categories of ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. In addition, the Rudraksha plant owes a high status in medicinal science, ayurveda, and religious mythology. In the last five decades, studies were conducted on various species of Elaeocarpus for their beneficial aspects. It was found that Elaeocarpus plants have a vital role in ayurveda, pharmaceuticals, and pharmacological and astrological science. In addition, they have been used as food, firewood, timber, and the production of secondary metabolites and their role in cultural and religious dimensions are very clearly discussed. The provisioning and cultural services delivered by Rudraksha constitute only 30% and 10% of the services mentioned in MEA (2005). However, only a little research has been conducted on regulatory and supporting services provided by Rudraksha. Therefore, for a long-term sustainability and multifunctionality assessment, the extension of ecosystem services regarding individual plant’s (tree) services should be highly recommended. Hence, the present review investigates the scientific knowledge about the ecosystem services of the Elaeocarpus.

Paleoclimate reconstructions can provide a window into the environmental conditions in Earth history when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were higher than today. In the eastern USA, paleoclimate reconstructions are sparse, because terrestrial sedimentary deposits are rare. Despite this, the eastern USA has the largest population and population density in North America, and understanding the effects of current and future climate change is of vital importance. Here, we provide terrestrial paleoclimate reconstructions of the eastern USA from Miocene fossil floras. Additionally, we compare proxy paleoclimate reconstructions from the warmest period in the Miocene, the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO), to those of an MCO Earth System Model. Reconstructed Miocene temperatures and precipitation north of 35°N are higher than modern. In contrast, south of 35°N, temperatures and precipitation are similar to today, suggesting a poleward amplification effect in eastern North America. Reconstructed Miocene rainfall seasonality was predominantly higher than modern, regardless of latitude, indicating greater variability in intra-annual moisture transport. Reconstructed climates are almost uniformly in the temperate seasonal forest biome, but heterogeneity of specific forest types is evident. Reconstructed Miocene terrestrial temperatures from the eastern USA are lower than modeled temperatures and coeval Atlantic sea surface temperatures. However, reconstructed rainfall is consistent with modeled rainfall. Our results show that during the Miocene, climate was most different from modern in the northeastern states, and may suggest a drastic reduction in the meridional temperature gradient along the North American east coast compared to today.

Cultivated plants provide food, fiber, and energy but they can escape, de-domesticate, colonize agroecosystems as weeds, and disrupt natural ecosystems as invasive species. Escape and invasion depend on traits of the species, type and rate of domestication, and cultivation context. Understanding this “de-domestication invasion process” is critical for managing conservation efforts to reduce unintended consequences of cultivated species in novel areas. Cannabis (Cannabis sativa L.) is an ideal case study to explore this process because it was one of the earliest plants to co-evolve with humans, has a crop to weed history, and has been introduced and cultivated globally. Moreover, recent liberalization of cannabis cultivation and use policies have raised concerns about invasion risk. Here, we synthesize knowledge on cannabis breeding, cultivation, and processing relevant to invasion risk and outline research and management priorities to help overcome the research deficit on the invasion ecology of the species. Understanding the transition of cannabis through the de-domestication-invasion process will inform policy and minimize agricultural and environmental risks associated with cultivation of domesticated species.

Protected areas (PAs) are key tools to prevent extinction and preserve ecosystem functions. As countries reiterated their commitment to expand the reach of PAs by up to 30 % by 2030, stronger purpose and pertinence in the establishment of PAs is needed to ensure effective conservation. In this study, we used Dipterocarpaceae as a proxy for threatened and ecologically important trees to determine the role of PAs in tree conservation and the potential shortfalls at a global scale. We quantified the overlap between the geo-referenced occurrence data of 433 Dipterocarpaceae species and the distribution of global PAs, followed by a conservation gap analysis on Borneo, the center of diversity of the family. We found that while Southeast Asia is the hotspot for species diversity and threat to Dipterocarpaceae, a high proportion of threatened species were found at the range edges of Dipterocarpaceae. Half of all the countries with Dipterocarpaceae met the Aichi Target 11 of designating at least 17 % of their land area as PAs, and most had <10 % of their total number of PAs being relevant to Dipterocarpaceae conservation. Our conservation gap analysis demonstrated that only 5.02 % of the total area of habitat (AOH) of endemic and Critically Endangered dipterocarps was formally protected, while 18.6 % of the total AOH was included in the Heart of Borneo complex. Our data highlights the need for a more effective global conservation gap analysis for threatened trees that could inform area-based conservation post-2020.

Aim The relationships between biome shifts and global environmental changes in temperate zone habitats have been extensively explored; yet, the historical dynamics of taxa found in the tropical rain forest (TRF) remain poorly known. This study aims to reconstruct the relationships between tropical rain forest shifts and global environmental changes through the patterns of historical biogeography of a pantropical family of monocots, the Zingiberaceae. Location Global. Taxon Zingiberaceae. Methods We sampled DNA sequences (nrITS, trnK, trnL-trnF and psbA-trnH) from GenBank for 77% of the genera, including 30% of species, in the Zingiberaceae. Global fossil records of the Zingiberaceae were collected from literatures. Rates of speciation, extinction and diversification were estimated based on phylogenetic data and fossil records through methods implemented in BAMM. Ancestral ranges were estimated using single-tree BioGeoBEARS and multiple-trees BioGeoBEARS in RASP. Dispersal rate through time and dispersal rate among regions were calculated in R based on the result of ancestral estimation. Results The common ancestor of the Zingiberaceae likely originated in northern Africa during the mid-Cretaceous, with later dispersal to the Asian tropics. Indo-Burma, rather than Malesia, was likely a provenance of the common ancestor of Alpinioideae–Zingiberoideae. Several abrupt shifts of evolutionary rates from the Palaeocene were synchronized with sudden global environmental changes. Main conclusions Integrating phylogenetic patterns with fossil records suggests that the Zingiberaceae dispersed to Asia through drift of the Indian Plate from Africa in the late Palaeocene. Formation of island chains, land corridors and warming temperatures facilitated the emigration of the Zingiberaceae to a broad distribution across the tropics. Moreover, dramatic fluctuations of the speciation rate of Zingiberoideae appear to have been synchronized with global climate fluctuations. In general, the evolutionary history of the Zingiberaceae broadens our understanding of the association between TRF shifts in distribution and past global environmental changes, especially the origin of TRF in Southeast Asia.

The early Eocene (∼56‐48 million years ago) is characterised by high CO2 estimates (1200‐2500 ppmv) and elevated global temperatures (∼10 to 16°C higher than modern). However, the response of the hydrological cycle during the early Eocene is poorly constrained, especially in regions with sparse data coverage (e.g. Africa). Here we present a study of African hydroclimate during the early Eocene, as simulated by an ensemble of state‐of‐the‐art climate models in the Deep‐time Model Intercomparison Project (DeepMIP). A comparison between the DeepMIP pre‐industrial simulations and modern observations suggests that model biases are model‐ and geographically dependent, however these biases are reduced in the model ensemble mean. A comparison between the Eocene simulations and the pre‐industrial suggests that there is no obvious wetting or drying trend as the CO2 increases. The results suggest that changes to the land sea mask (relative to modern) in the models may be responsible for the simulated increases in precipitation to the north of Eocene Africa. There is an increase in precipitation over equatorial and West Africa and associated drying over northern Africa as CO2 rises. There are also important dynamical changes, with evidence that anticyclonic low‐level circulation is replaced by increased south‐westerly flow at high CO2 levels. Lastly, a model‐data comparison using newly‐compiled quantitative climate estimates from palaeobotanical proxy data suggests a marginally better fit with the reconstructions at lower levels of CO2.

For many regions, such as in South America, it is unclear how well the existent protected areas network (PAs) covers different taxonomic groups and if there is a coverage bias of PAs towards certain biomes or species. Publicly available occurrence data along with ecological niche models might help to overcome this gap and to quantify the coverage of taxa by PAs ensuring an unbiased distribution of conservation effort. Here, we use an occurrence database of 271 species from the cacao family (Malvaceae) to address how South American PAs cover species with different distribution, abundance, and threat status. Furthermore, we compared the performance of online databases, expert knowledge, and modelled species distributions in estimating species coverage in PAs. We found 79 species from our survey (29% of the total) lack any record inside South American PAs and that 20 out of 23 species potentially threatened with extinction are not covered by PAs. The area covered by South American PAs was low across biomes, except for Amazonia, which had a relative high PA coverage, but little information on species distribution within PA available. Also, raw geo-referenced occurrence data were underestimating the number of species in PAs, and projections from ecological niche models were more prone to overestimating the number of species represented within PAs. We discuss that the protection of South American flora in heterogeneous environments demand for specific strategies tailored to particular biomes, including making new collections inside PAs in less collected areas, and the delimitation of more areas for protection in more known areas. Also, by presenting biasing scenarios of collection effort in a representative plant group, our results can benefit policy makers in conserving different spots of tropical environments highly biodiverse.

Abstract. Statistical climate reconstruction techniques are fundamental tools to study past climate variability from fossil proxy data. In particular, the methods based on probability density functions (or PDFs) can be used in various environments and with different climate proxies because they rely on elementary calibration data (i.e. modern geolocalised presence data). However, the difficulty of accessing and curating these calibration data and the complexity of interpreting probabilistic results have often limited their use in palaeoclimatological studies. Here, I introduce a new R package (crestr) to apply the PDF-based method CREST (Climate REconstruction SofTware) on diverse palaeoecological datasets and address these problems. crestr includes a globally curated calibration dataset for six common climate proxies (i.e. plants, beetles, chironomids, rodents, foraminifera, and dinoflagellate cysts) associated with an extensive range of climate variables (20 terrestrial and 19 marine variables) that enables its use in most terrestrial and marine environments. Private data collections can also be used instead of, or in combination with, the provided calibration dataset. The package includes a suite of graphical diagnostic tools to represent the data at each step of the reconstruction process and provide insights into the effect of the different modelling assumptions and external factors that underlie a reconstruction. With this R package, the CREST method can now be used in a scriptable environment and thus be more easily integrated with existing workflows. It is hoped that crestr will be used to produce the much-needed quantified climate reconstructions from the many regions where they are currently lacking, despite the availability of suitable fossil records. To support this development, the use of the package is illustrated with a step-by-step replication of a 790 000-year-long mean annual temperature reconstruction based on a pollen record from southeastern Africa.

Biological invasions pose an unprecedented threat to biodiversity and ecosystems at different spatial scales, especially for a biodiversity‐rich developing nation like India. While country‐level checklists of alien taxa are important, databases having their biological and ecological attributes are of paramount importance for facilitating research activities and developing policy interventions. Such a comprehensive database for alien flora is lacking in India.We have curated data for 14 variables related to ecology, biogeography, introduction pathway, socio‐economy and distribution of 1747 alien vascular plant species from 22 national and global sources to produce the Indian Alien Flora Information (ILORA) version 1.0 database. This paper describes the detailed methodology of curating these data along with the rationale behind selecting these variables.The database, the first of its kind for the Indian alien flora, will provide easy access to high‐quality data and offer a ready reference to comprehend the existing scenario of alien plant species in the country. The database is dynamic and will be updated regularly. It has a provision to incorporate user‐submitted data, which will allow increasing the resolution of the database as well as the expansion of its capacity.The database is envisaged to become a nationwide collaborative platform for a wide spectrum of stakeholders. It is freely accessible via an online data repository as well as through a dedicated website (https://ilora2020.wixsite.com/ilora2020).