Spatial distribution of Annonaceae across biomes and anthromes: Knowledge gaps in spatial and ecological data

Abstract

Societal Impact Statement The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration underlines the importance of understanding how different taxa are affected by human induced, global changes in ecosystems. Here, we investigate if this impact can be quantified for the globally distributed tropical plant group Annonaceae (Soursop family) using distributional data and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List assessments. We find that even for a taxonomically well‐studied tropical plant family such as Annonaceae, little is known about the true distribution and ecological requirements of, and threats to, species in this group. We discuss several improvements in data collection that should enable more in‐depth analyses in the future. Summary The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (UN), formulated with the overarching aims to end poverty and protect the planet, are also aimed at implementing sustainable management of all types of forests, to stop deforestation and to restore degraded forests. This led to the declaration of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. To meaningfully restore ecosystems, it is important to increase our understanding on the distribution of taxa and obtain insight in how different taxa are affected by human induced, global changes in ecosystems. Here, we investigate if this impact can be quantified for the globally distributed tropical plant group Annonaceae (Soursop family) using spatial data and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List assessments. Insight is gained in how Annonaceae are distributed over biomes and anthropogenic biomes (anthromes) and how threatened Annonaceae are based on their distribution. We find that even for a taxonomically well‐studied group such as Annonaceae, very little is known about the true distribution and ecological requirements of, and threats, to species. We urge to invest in (1) the exploration of ecological requirements of species in relation to their genetic patterns, in order to understand the impact of ecosystems changes, (2) research on distributional patterns in a temporal framework as the available data collected over decades might not reflect current distributions over biomes and anthromes well and (3) high‐quality spatial data collection that should adhere to the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reuse (FAIR) data principles, so that the quality of spatial analyses as well as IUCN Red List assessments will increase.

Keywords

• Anthropocene
• conservation
• geographic information system (GIS)
• herbarium collections
• higher‐taxon approach
• plant distributions