Olga Gladys Martínez, Natalia del Pilar Moreno, Dryflor, Flávia Fonseca Pezzini, Tiina Särkinen, Jafet M. Nassar, Nelly Rodríguez, Omar Melo, Hilda del Carmen Dueñas, Luciano A. Galetti, Michael P. Oatham, Julián Camilo Arteaga, Danilo M. Neves, Hermes Cuadros, Humfredo Marcano-Vega, Morag McDonald, Ethan H. Freid, Diego Alonso Restrepo Molina, Roy González-M., Francisco Mijares, Ary Teixeira de Oliveira-Filho, Darién E. Prado, Reynaldo Linares-Palomino, Julia Weintritt, Ángel Fernández, Juan Adarve, Wilson Devia, Laurie Fajardo, Gerardo Aymard, Freddy Delgado, R. Toby Pennington, Pedro Acevedo-Rodríguez, Alma Rosa Olvera-Luna, Janet Franklin, Esteban Álvarez, Melvin Smith, Reina Gonto, Boris Villanueva, Virginia Yanina Mogni, Orlando Rivera, Natalia Ceballos-Mago, Carlos Vargas, Alfonso Delgado-Salinas, M M Gina Rodríguez, B Anairamiz Aranguren, Hernán M. Maturo, Alicia Rojas, Álvaro Idárraga, Orlando Joel Reyes Dominguez, María Elvira Ríos, Luis Jorge Oakley, Roger Graveson, Alejandro Castaño, Eileen H. Helmer, Kurt McLaren, René López, Álvaro Cogollo, Martin R. Pullan, Kyle G. Dexter, Karina Banda-R, Miller Ángel Fernández, Ricarda Riina, Catalina Quintana, and Roberto Sánchez
Seasonally dry tropical forests are distributed across Latin America and the Caribbean and are highly threatened, with less than 10% of their original extent remaining in many countries. Using 835 inventories covering 4660 species of woody plants, we show marked floristic turnover among inventories and regions, which may be higher than in other neotropical biomes, such as savanna. Such high floristic turnover indicates that numerous conservation areas across many countries will be needed to protect the full diversity of tropical dry forests. Our results provide a scientific framework within which national decision-makers can contextualize the floristic significance of their dry forest at a regional and continental scale., This paper is the result of the Latin American and Caribbean Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest Floristic Network (DRYFLOR), which has been supported at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh by a Leverhulme Trust International Network Grant (IN-074). This work was also supported by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council grant NE/ I028122/1; Colciencias Ph.D. scholarship 529; Synthesys Programme GBTAF-2824; the NSF (NSF 1118340 and 1118369); the Instituto Humboldt (IAvH)–Red colombiana de investigación y monitoreo en bosque seco; the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI; Tropi-Dry, CRN2-021, funded by NSF GEO 0452325); Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR); and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). The data reported in this paper are available at www.dryflor.info. R.T.P. conceived the study. M.P., A.O.-F., K.B.-R., R.T.P., and J.W. designed the DRYFLOR database system. K.B.-R. and K.G.D. carried out most analyses. K.B.-R. R.T.P., and K.G.D. wrote the manuscript with substantial input from A.D.-S., R.L.-P., A.O.-F., D.P., C.Q., and R.R.