Colombia, best place in the world to discover new plant species

Worldwide, more than 350,000 plant species have been described for science. However, it is possible that more than 15 percent have yet to be discovered. That they will disappear without being known is one of the great fears that keeps botanists and biologists awake at night. It is not an unfounded fear, given the crisis of biodiversity loss that the planet is experiencing.

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The fact is that the search for unknown plants is a slow and arduous task that seems to have been carried out without concentrating efforts on areas prioritized for their potential to yield a greater number of new discoveries. It is precisely this issue that has frustrated Alexandre Antonelli, scientific director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London), one of the most important institutions when it comes to studying the planet's biodiversity.

"Many institutions have been working in different parts of the world for hundreds of years, but without a plan to develop these efforts in the most effective way. Botanists have known for a long time that there are regions of the planet that have been very little explored, but what happens is that not all regions that have not been visited by man have the same number of species", explains the researcher, who has proposed to advance a study to estimate in which places of the map of natural treasures would be more likely to find the "X" that marks a new species for science.

In this way, Antonelli and his colleagues conducted a historical analysis based on collections such as those at Kew - one of the largest collections of pressed plants - that were maintained over centuries by botanists who collected samples from different locations. There are about 3,000 herbaria around the world with such collections of information, which served as the main source for the study to determine, for example, when each plant was discovered and how long it took to describe it.

The researchers detailed these historical patterns and created computer models by cross-referencing this information with environmental data, such as where there is more rain or where it is warmer, two factors associated with greater biodiversity. This allowed them to make future predictions about where the regions with more new species will be.

"The 33 regions we identified are not just places where there is not a lot of knowledge, because some of them have a lot. They are regions where the models predict that we will discover more species in the future. It is not necessarily that little research has been done, but that there is a lot of potential. For a region or country to be classified as a dark spot, it has to have a lot of new species to discover and gaps in knowledge," says Kew's scientific director.

The 33 dark spots are distributed as follows 14 in large areas of tropical Asia (New Guinea, Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Assam, the Philippines, the eastern Himalayas, Borneo, Thailand, Laos, the western Himalayas, Malaya, Bangladesh, and Sumatra), eight in South America (Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, southeastern Brazil, Costa Rica, and Panama), Ecuador, southeastern Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama, and Venezuela), temperate Asia (south-central China, Turkey, Iran, southeastern China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Kazakhstan), two in Africa (Madagascar and Cape Province), and one in North America (southwestern Mexico). According to the researchers, northern Brazil ranked 34th and was the first botanical country to exceed the cumulative area of biodiversity hotspots, so it was not considered a dark spot.

The scientists found that most of the "dark spots" of plant diversity are located within the so-called global biodiversity hotspots, with the exception of New Guinea. "Colombia, Myanmar, New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines and Turkey are the global priorities for collection under all environmental and socioeconomic conditions considered," they said in the study.

"Colombia is the country in the world where, based on the analyses, we estimate the highest number of plant species to be collected. The country already has a good database, Colombian botanists have done an excellent job in mapping its flora, but there are still many species that have not been discovered. It is an opportunity on a global level that there is more research here in the country," says Antonelli.

Knowing our natural wealth is a fundamental inventory for making decisions about conservation and restoration, such as those being discussed at the United Nations Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16), currently taking place in Cali. For example, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets a target of protecting 30 percent of the world's land and marine areas, but we will not know which areas to protect unless we have the right information.

The study aims to streamline this documentation process so that, for example, areas of immense diversity can be prioritized for protection: "As the digitization of the world's herbaria progresses, collection and conservation priorities can soon be identified at finer scales," the study says.

Antonelli notes that the main challenge is international cooperation and intellectual and financial for countries that need help in completing their flora inventories. "In our work, we have done analyses that compare the level of species that have not been discovered with socio-economic data. For example, there are regions where there are still many undiscovered species, but they already have the financial and technological capacity to do the work. In other countries, such as Turkey or Angola, they need more to do the work.

The researchers also decided to include fungi in the study, a group where progress in research and understanding has also been slow. "It is estimated that about 15 percent of all plant species and more than 90 percent of all fungal species have not yet been scientifically described, hampering our ability to target, assess and demonstrate the impact of efforts to halt biodiversity loss," say scientists from institutions such as the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (London) and the Missouri Botanical Garden, who presented a statement at COP16 urging the acceleration of research efforts in this area.

Experts estimate that more than 90 percent of all fungal species have yet to be scientifically described, hampering our ability to assess and demonstrate the impact of efforts to halt biodiversity loss. It also hinders access to information that could provide clues to future discoveries of medicines, fuels or other innovations.

Their concern is that at the current pace of science - which is also plagued by problems of repetition - filling these gaps would take considerable time. In the case of fungi, in particular, it would take between 750 and 1,000 years to describe all the species, at a rate of about 2,500 new species per year.

"The main challenge is to make botanical work more efficient. We cannot wait tens and perhaps hundreds of years to discover all the species, because many will disappear. For conservation, it is fundamental to know how many species there are and where they are. This is the first step, because if a species is not described, it cannot be included in the Red List and no resources will be allocated to protect it," concludes Antonelli.

ALEJANDRA LÓPEZ PLAZAS

ENVIRONMENT DESK