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Science 23 September 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5743, p. 1986
DOI: 10.1126/science.309.5743.1986d
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Figure 1 Biologists rely on maps showing the distribution of wildlife around the world for conservation planning. Now they've got a global chart for plants. Plants have a huge influence on other components of ecosystems, says Taylor Ricketts of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Washington, D.C. Without such data, "we've been flying blind in terms of conservation planning," he says.

The new map, published in the July issue of the Journal of Biogeography, plots the number of plant species in each of 867 terrestrial "ecoregions." The most diverse region is the Borneo lowlands, with more than 10,000 species, followed by regions in Central and South America. One of the most impoverished, outside of deserts, was the southern Indian Ocean islands, with some 35 species.

"It's an important benchmark," says Robert Whittaker of the University of Oxford of the map, a joint effort of WWF and botany doctoral student Gerold Kier and colleagues at the University of Bonn, Germany. Whittaker predicts it will have a "powerful impact" on global conservation planning. A novel feature of the map is its assessment of the quality of the data available. The group found them particularly sparse for tropical grasslands submerged most of the year and for the southern Amazon basin.

CREDIT: KIER ET AL., JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY, 10.1111/J 32 (2005)




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