Floristics in Mexico today: insights into a better understanding of biodiversity in a megadiverse country

Bibliographic Details
Title: Floristics in Mexico today: insights into a better understanding of biodiversity in a megadiverse country
Authors: José Luis Villaseñor, Jorge A. Meave
Source: Botan‪ical Sciences, Vol 100, Iss Special (2022)
Publisher Information: Sociedad Botánica de México, A. C., 2022.
Publication Year: 2022
Collection: LCC:Botany
Subject Terms: Biomes, Checklists, Biodiversity, Databases, Floristic richness, Vascular plants, Botany, QK1-989
More Details: Advancing our current knowledge on floristic richness in Mexico requires access to different sources, including published and unpublished inventories, fascicles of ongoing floristic projects, and publicly available online databases. The evaluation of these sources reveals how extensive the information available on the country’s floristic diversity is, its heterogeneity, and the lack of protocols and standards for its proper organization, analysis, and synthesis. This review addresses the extent to which these sources of information provide the basis to achieve the long-awaited goal of completing the Flora of Mexico, and how traditional outputs of taxonomic work (Floras and checklists) are useful to other fields of biological research. We identified major knowledge gaps, as well as actual and potential uses by other scholars and the public. Although all reviewed sources focus on a better knowledge of the Mexican plant species, each one has its own approach, geographic coverage, and objectives, producing incompatibilities that hamper their integration for rapid and efficient synthesis and analysis. Such integration should offer an updated scenario of its taxonomic and geographical coverage, setting the foundations for organized protocols and strategies aimed to complete the Flora of Mexico in the short term. Floristic knowledge for the country continues to advance actively, as indicated by the growing number of floristic inventories and the buildup of online databases. This synthesis shows how much we know today about Mexico’s vascular plant richness and highlights the relevance of this knowledge to other fields of study of nature, particularly those related to its plant component.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
Spanish; Castilian
ISSN: 2007-4298
2007-4476
Relation: https://www.botanicalsciences.com.mx/index.php/botanicalSciences/article/view/3050; https://doaj.org/toc/2007-4298; https://doaj.org/toc/2007-4476
DOI: 10.17129/botsci.3050
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/5ef4a4362aad4a24b85691c02753e7cb
Accession Number: edsdoj.5ef4a4362aad4a24b85691c02753e7cb
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals