Colombia’s bioregions as a source of useful plants.
Name
journal.pone.0256457.pdf
Description
visibility:open
Size
1.78 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
QnIJ2gMBMSI=
Resource type
Journal article
Date published
August 27, 2021
Abstract
The aim of our study was to assess the importance of different Colombian bioregions in terms of the supply of useful plant species and the quality of the available distribution data. We assembled a dataset of georeferenced collection localities of all vascular plants of Colombia available from global and local online databases. We then assembled a list of species, subspecies and varieties of Colombia’s useful plants and retrieved all point locality information associated with these taxa. We overlaid both datasets with a map of Colombia’s bioregions to retrieve all species and useful species distribution records in each bioregion. To assess the reliability of our estimates of species numbers, we identified information gaps , in geographic and environmental space, by estimating their completeness and coverage. Our results confirmed that Colombia’s third largest bioregion, the Andean moist forest followed by the Amazon, Pacific, Llanos and Caribbean moist forests contained the largest numbers of useful plant species. Medicinal use was the most common useful attribute across all bioregions, followed by Materials, Environmental uses, and Human Food. In all bioregions, except for the Andean páramo, the proportion of well-surveyed 10×10 km grid cells (with ≥ 25 observation records of useful plants) was below 50% of the total number of surveyed cells. Poor survey coverage was observed in the three dry bioregions: Caribbean deserts and xeric shrublands, and Llanos and Caribbean dry forests. This suggests that additional primary data is needed. We document knowledge gaps that will hinder the incorporation of useful plants into Colombia’s stated plans for a bioeconomy and their sustainable management. In particular, future research should focus on the generation of additional primary data on the distribution of useful plants in the Amazon and Llanos (Orinoquia) regions where both survey completeness and coverage appeared to be less adequate compared with other regions.
Project(s)
Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia
Plantas y Hongos Útiles de Colombia
Journal title
PLOS ONE
Volume
16
Issue
8
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Place of publication
California, US
eISSN
1932-6203
Date accepted
August 6, 2021
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Rights statement
In Copyright