New Guinea has the world's richest island flora

Cámara-Leret R 1 , Frodin DG 2 , Adema F 3 , Anderson C 4 , Appelhans MS 5 , Argent G 6 Show all authors , Arias Guerrero S 3 , Ashton P 2 , Baker WJ 2 , Barfod AS 7 , Barrington D 8 , Borosova R 2 , Bramley GLC 2 , Briggs M 2 , Buerki S 9 , Cahen D 2 , Callmander MW 10 , Cheek M 2 , Chen CW 11 , Conn BJ 12 , Coode MJE 2 , Darbyshire I 2 , Dawson S 2 , Dransfield J 2 , Drinkell C 2 , Duyfjes B 3 , Ebihara A 13 , Ezedin Z 14 , Fu LF 15 , Gideon O 16 , Girmansyah D 17 , Govaerts R 2 , Fortune-Hopkins H 2 , Hassemer G 18 , Hay A 19 , Heatubun CD 2 , Hind DJN 2 , Hoch P 20 , Homot P 21 , Hovenkamp P 3 , Hughes M 6 , Jebb M 22 , Jennings L 2 , Jimbo T 21 , Kessler M 23 , Kiew R 24 , Knapp S 25 , Lamei P 21 , Lehnert M 26 , Lewis GP 2 , Linder HP 23 , Lindsay S 27 , Low YW 2 , Lucas E 2 , Mancera JP 28 , Monro AK 2 , Moore A 2 , Middleton DJ 29 , Nagamasu H 30 , Newman MF 6 , Nic Lughadha E 2 , Melo PHA 31 , Ohlsen DJ 32 , Pannell CM 2 , Parris B 33 , Pearce L 2 , Penneys DS 34 , Perrie LR 35 , Petoe P 2 , Poulsen AD 6 , Prance GT 2 , Quakenbush JP 36 , Raes N 3 , Rodda M 29 , Rogers ZS 37 , Schuiteman A 2 , Schwartsburd P 38 , Scotland RW 39 , Simmons MP 40 , Simpson DA 2 , Stevens P 20 , Sundue M 8 , Testo W 41 , Trias-Blasi A 2 , Turner I 2 , Utteridge T 2 , Walsingham L 2 , Webber BL 42 , Wei R 43 , Weiblen GD 14 , Weigend M 26 , Weston P 19 , de Wilde W 3 , Wilkie P 6 , Wilmot-Dear CM 2 , Wilson HP 6 , Wood JRI 2 , Zhang LB 20 , van Welzen PC 3

Affiliations 

  • 1 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, UK. rodrigo.camaraleret@ieu.uzh.ch
  • 2 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, UK
  • 3 Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
  • 4 University of Michigan Herbarium, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
  • 5 Department of Systematics, Biodiversity and Evolution of Plants, Albrecht-von-Haller Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
  • 6 Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  • 7 Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  • 8 The Pringle Herbarium, Department of Plant Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
  • 9 Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA
  • 10 Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève, Chambésy, Switzerland
  • 11 Independent consultant, Keelung, Taiwan
  • 12 School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  • 13 Department of Botany, National Museum of Nature and Science, Tsukuba, Japan
  • 14 Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA
  • 15 Guangxi Key Laboratory of Plant Conservation and Restoration Ecology in Karst Terrain, Guangxi Institute of Botany, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guilin, China
  • 16 The Papua New Guinea University of Technology, Lae, Papua New Guinea
  • 17 Herbarium Bogoriense, Bogor, Indonesia
  • 18 Três Lagoas Campus, Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Três Lagoas, Brazil
  • 19 Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  • 20 Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, MO, USA
  • 21 Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute, Lae, Papua New Guinea
  • 22 The National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, Glasnevin, Ireland
  • 23 Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 24 Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Kepong, Malaysia
  • 25 Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK
  • 26 Nees Institute for Biodiversity of Plants, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
  • 27 Native Plants Centre, National Parks Board, Singapore, Singapore
  • 28 Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines Manila, Manila, The Philippines
  • 29 Singapore Botanic Gardens, National Parks Board, Singapore, Singapore
  • 30 The Kyoto University Museum, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
  • 31 Institute of Biosciences, São Paulo State University, Rio Claro, Brazil
  • 32 Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, South Yarra, Victoria, Australia
  • 33 Fern Research Foundation, Kerikeri, New Zealand
  • 34 University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC, USA
  • 35 Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
  • 36 Department of Biological Sciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
  • 37 Department of Animal and Range Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA
  • 38 Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, Brazil
  • 39 Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  • 40 Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
  • 41 Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
  • 42 CSIRO Land and Water, Floreat, Western Australia, Australia
  • 43 Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Nature, 2020 08;584(7822):579-583.
PMID: 32760001 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2549-5

Abstract

New Guinea is the world's largest tropical island and has fascinated naturalists for centuries1,2. 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 diversity6,7. So far, however, there has been no attempt to critically catalogue the entire vascular plant diversity of New Guinea. Here we present the first, to our knowledge, expert-verified checklist of the vascular plants of mainland New Guinea and surrounding islands. Our publicly available checklist includes 13,634 species (68% endemic), 1,742 genera and 264 families-suggesting that New Guinea is the most floristically diverse island in the world. Expert knowledge is essential for building checklists in the digital era: reliance on online taxonomic resources alone would have inflated species counts by 22%. Species discovery shows no sign of levelling off, and we discuss steps to accelerate botanical research in the 'Last Unknown'8.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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