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Journal article
Molecules from nature: Reconciling biodiversity conservation and global healthcare imperatives for sustainable use of medicinal plants and fungi.
Societal Impact Statement Plants and fungi have provided, or inspired, key pharmaceuticals for global health challenges, including cancer, heart disease, dementia, and malaria, and are valued as traditional medicines worldwide. Global demand for medicinal plants and fungi has threatened certain species, contributing to biodiversity loss and depletion of natural resources... -
Journal article
International collaboration between collections‐based institutes for halting biodiversity loss and unlocking the useful properties of plants and fungi
Societal Impact Statement The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 calls for “strong global partnerships and cooperation” to support the other SDGs. The collections‐based science community offers many examples of conservation of plant and fungal biodiversity, sharing, repatriation and aggregation of data, access to new technologies, supply of plant... -
Journal article
Extinction risk and threats to plants and fungi
Societal Impact Statement There is increasing awareness that plants and fungi, as natural solutions, can play an important role in tackling ongoing global environmental challenges. We illustrate how understanding current and projected threats to plants and fungi is necessary to manage and mitigate risks, while building awareness of gaps and... -
Journal article
New Guinea has the world’s richest island flora
New Guinea is the world’s largest tropical island and has fascinated naturalists for centuries. Home to some of the best-preserved ecosystems on the planet3 and to intact ecological gradients—from mangroves to tropical alpine grasslands—that are unmatched in the Asia-Pacific region4,5, it is a globally recognized centre of biological and cultural... -
Journal article
Caution Needed When Predicting Species Threat Status for Conservation Prioritization on a Global Scale
The recent Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report highlighted the large scale of extinction risks to biodiversity (Díaz et al., 2019). Assessing species' extinction risk is vital for setting conservation priorities and the first step toward protecting particular areas or groups. A widely accepted approach to... -
Journal article
Towards a scientific rationale for traditional properties of Chinese medicinal plants: “natures” and “flavors”
Objective According to theory of Chinese medicine property, the ecological environment shapes properties (natures and flavors) of Chinese materia medica (CMM) and there are close relationships between certain natures and flavors. However, to date these observations have not been validated scientifically in the context of the whole flora of a...Li, Li-ping ; Zhang, Ben-gang ; Zhang, Zhao ; Li, Xiao-jin ; Wang, Guo-ping …
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Journal article
Progress, challenges and opportunities for Red Listing
Despite its recognition as an important global resource for conservation, the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species only provides assessments of extinction risk for a small and biased subset of known biodiversity. A more complete Red List can better support species-level conservation by indicating...Bachman, Steven ; Field, Richard ; Reader, Tom ; Raimondo, Domitilla ; Donaldson, John …
Conservation, IUCN Red List, Vascular plants, and Extinction risk
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Journal article
Harnessing the potential of integrated systematics for conservation of taxonomically complex, megadiverse plant groups
The value of natural history collections for conservation science research is increasingly recognized, despite their well-documented limitations in terms of taxonomic, geographic, and temporal coverage. Specimen-based analyses are particularly important for tropical plant groups for which field observations are scarce and potentially unreliable due to high levels of diversity-amplifying identification...Nic Lughadha, Eimear ; Graziele Staggemeier, Vanessa ; Vasconcelos, Thais ; Walker, Barnaby ; Canteiro, Cátia …