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Tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) are model systems for global biodiversity science, but continuing data gaps, limited data standardisation, and ongoing flux in taxonomic nomenclature constrain integrative research on this group and potentially cause biased inference. We combined and harmonised taxonomic, spatial, phylogenetic, and attribute data with phylogeny-based multiple imputation to provide a comprehensive data resource (TetrapodTraits 1.0.0) that includes values, predictions, and sources for body size, activity time, micro- and macrohabitat, ecosystem, threat status, biogeography, insularity, environmental preferences, and human influence, for all 33,281 tetrapod species covered in recent fully sampled phylogenies. We assess gaps and biases across taxa and space, finding that shared data missing in attribute values increased with taxon-level completeness and richness across clades. Prediction of missing attribute values using multiple imputation revealed substantial changes in estimated macroecological patterns. These results highlight biases incurred by nonrandom missingness and strategies to best address them. While there is an obvious need for further data collection and updates, our phylogeny-informed database of tetrapod traits can support a more comprehensive representation of tetrapod species and their attributes in ecology, evolution, and conservation research., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Moura et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

All aspects of biodiversity research, from taxonomy to conservation, rely on data associated with species names. Effective integration of names across multiple fields is paramount and depends on the coordination and organization of taxonomic data. We assess current efforts and find that even key applications for well-studied taxa still lack commonality in taxonomic information required for integration. We identify essential taxonomic elements from our interoperability assessment to support improved access and integration of taxonomic data. A stronger focus on these elements has the potential to involve taxonomic communities in biodiversity science and overcome broken linkages currently limiting research capacity. We encourage a community effort to democratize taxonomic expertise and language in order to facilitate maximum interoperability and integration., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests No interests are declared., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Species occurrence data are foundational for research, conservation, and science communication, but the limited availability and accessibility of reliable data represents a major obstacle, particularly for insects, which face mounting pressures. We present BeeBDC, a new R package, and a global bee occurrence dataset to address this issue. We combined >18.3 million bee occurrence records from multiple public repositories (GBIF, SCAN, iDigBio, USGS, ALA) and smaller datasets, then standardised, flagged, deduplicated, and cleaned the data using the reproducible BeeBDC R-workflow. Specifically, we harmonised species names (following established global taxonomy), country names, and collection dates and, we added record-level flags for a series of potential quality issues. These data are provided in two formats, "cleaned" and "flagged-but-uncleaned". The BeeBDC package with online documentation provides end users the ability to modify filtering parameters to address their research questions. By publishing reproducible R workflows and globally cleaned datasets, we can increase the accessibility and reliability of downstream analyses. This workflow can be implemented for other taxa to support research and conservation., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Growing threats to biodiversity demand timely, detailed information on species occurrence, diversity and abundance at large scales. Camera traps (CTs), combined with computer vision models, provide an efficient method to survey species of certain taxa with high spatio-temporal resolution. We test the potential of CTs to close biodiversity knowledge gaps by comparing CT records of terrestrial mammals and birds from the recently released Wildlife Insights platform to publicly available occurrences from many observation types in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. In locations with CTs, we found they sampled a greater number of days (mean = 133 versus 57 days) and documented additional species (mean increase of 1% of expected mammals). For species with CT data, we found CTs provided novel documentation of their ranges (93% of mammals and 48% of birds). Countries with the largest boost in data coverage were in the historically underrepresented southern hemisphere. Although embargoes increase data providers' willingness to share data, they cause a lag in data availability. Our work shows that the continued collection and mobilization of CT data, especially when combined with data sharing that supports attribution and privacy, has the potential to offer a critical lens into biodiversity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Detecting and attributing the causes of biodiversity change: needs, gaps and solutions'.

The Country Compendium of the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species (GRIIS) is a collation of data across 196 individual country checklists of alien species, along with a designation of those species with evidence of impact at a country level. The Compendium provides a baseline for monitoring the distribution and invasion status of all major taxonomic groups, and can be used for the purpose of global analyses of introduced (alien, non-native, exotic) and invasive species (invasive alien species), including regional, single and multi-species taxon assessments and comparisons. It enables exploration of gaps and inferred absences of species across countries, and also provides one means for updating individual GRIIS Checklists. The Country Compendium is, for example, instrumental, along with data on first records of introduction, for assessing and reporting on invasive alien species targets, including for the Convention on Biological Diversity and Sustainable Development Goals. The GRIIS Country Compendium provides a baseline and mechanism for tracking the spread of introduced and invasive alien species across countries globally. Design Type(s) Data integration objective ● Observation design Measurement Type(s) Alien species occurrence ● Evidence of impact invasive alien species assessment objective Technology Type(s) Agent expert ● Data collation Factor Type(s) Geographic location ● Origin / provenance ● Habitat Sample Characteristics - Organism Animalia ● Bacteria ● Chromista ● Fungi ● Plantae ● Protista (Protozoa) ● Viruses Sample Characteristics - Location Global countries., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Aim: Comprehensive, global information on species' occurrences is an essential biodiversity variable and central to a range of applications in ecology, evolution, biogeography and conservation. Expert range maps often represent a species' only available distributional information and play an increasing role in conservation assessments and macroecology. We provide global range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal species harmonised to the taxonomy of the Mammal Diversity Database (MDD) mobilised from two sources, the Handbook of the Mammals of the World (HMW) and the Illustrated Checklist of the Mammals of the World (CMW)., Location: Global., Taxon: All extant mammal species., Methods: Range maps were digitally interpreted, georeferenced, error-checked and subsequently taxonomically aligned between the HMW (6253 species), the CMW (6431 species) and the MDD taxonomies (6362 species)., Results: Range maps can be evaluated and visualised in an online map browser at Map of Life (mol.org) and accessed for individual or batch download for non-commercial use., Main Conclusion: Expert maps of species' global distributions are limited in their spatial detail and temporal specificity, but form a useful basis for broad-scale characterizations and model-based integration with other data. We provide georeferenced range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal species as shapefiles, with species-level metadata and source information packaged together in geodatabase format. Across the three taxonomic sources our maps entail, there are 1784 taxonomic name differences compared to the maps currently available on the IUCN Red List website. The expert maps provided here are harmonised to the MDD taxonomic authority and linked to a community of online tools that will enable transparent future updates and version control., Competing Interests: CONFLICT OF INTEREST The authors declare no competing interests.

Plant populations are seriously threatened by anthropogenic habitat disturbance. In particular, defaunation may disrupt plant-disperser mutualisms, thus reducing levels of seed-mediated gene flow and genetic variation in animal-dispersed plants. This may ultimately limit their adaptive potential and ability to cope with environmental change. Tropical forest remnants are typically deprived of medium to large vertebrates upon which many large-seeded plants rely for accomplishing effective seed dispersal. Our main goal was to examine the potential early genetic consequences of the loss of large vertebrates for large-seeded vertebrate-dispersed plants. We compared the genetic variation in early-stage individuals of the large-seeded palm Syagrus romanzoffiana between continuous protected forest and nearby partially defaunated fragments in the Atlantic Forest of South America. Using nine microsatellites, we found lower allelic richness and stronger fine-scale spatial genetic structure in the disturbed area. In addition, the percentage of dispersed recruits around conspecific adults was lower, although not significantly, in the disturbed area (median values: 0.0 vs 14.4%). On the other hand, no evidence of increased inbreeding or reduced pollen-mediated gene flow (selfing rate and diversity of pollen donors) was found in the disturbed area. Our findings are strongly suggestive of some early genetic consequences resulting from the limitation in contemporary gene flow via seeds, but not pollen, in defaunated areas. Plant-disperser mutualisms involving medium-large frugivores, which are seriously threatened in tropical systems, should therefore be protected to warrant the maintenance of seed-mediated gene flow and genetic diversity in large-seeded plants.

Wetland loss is a global concern because wetlands are highly diverse ecosystems that provide important goods and services, thus threatening both biodiversity and human well-being. The Paraná River Delta is one of the largest and most important wetland ecosystems of South America, undergoing expanding cattle and forestry activities with widespread water control practices. To understand the patterns and drivers of land cover change in the Lower Paraná River Delta, we quantified land cover changes and modeled associated factors. We developed land cover maps using Landsat images from 1999 and 2013 and identified main land cover changes. We quantified the influence of different socioeconomic (distance to roads, population centers and human activity centers), land management (area within polders, cattle density and years since last fire), biophysical variables (landscape unit, elevation, soil productivity, distance to rivers) and variables related to extreme system dynamics (flooding and fires) on freshwater marsh conversion with Boosted Regression Trees. We found that one third of the freshwater marshes of the Lower Delta (163,000ha) were replaced by pastures (70%) and forestry (18%) in only 14years. Ranching practices (represented by cattle density, area within polders and distance to roads) were the most important factors responsible for freshwater marsh conversion to pasture. These rapid and widespread losses of freshwater marshes have potentially large negative consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem services. A strategy for sustainable wetland management will benefit from careful analysis of dominant land uses and related management practices, to develop an urgently needed land use policy for the Lower Delta., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)