Biology subjects

Wenk, E. H.

Publications and source records attributed to Wenk, E. H..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

A-Islands: A plant dataset for biodiversity research and species monitoring on Australian islands

Australias coastline is fringed by more than 8,000 continental islands. These islands feature a diverse array of landforms, rock and soil types and geological origins. Some of these islands are among the least invaded, most pristine habitats in Australia and support high plant diversity. Here, we present a new Australia-wide curated dataset for plant species occurrences on islands. Combining information from 1,349 species lists and floras, A-Islands includes data on >6,500 plant species from 844 islands ranging in size from 18 m2 to 4,400 km2, exhibiting different degrees of isolation from the mainland, and spanning all major Australian climate zones. Of these, 251 islands have been repeatedly sampled up to 11 times making it possible to investigate temporal compositional change. A-Islands is open access and will be continuously updated. Its simple data structure consisting of three comma separated files allows easy integration with other Australian and global plant-occurrence databases and can serve as a repository for island research in Australia. Knowing which species occur on Australia's islands will provide opportunities for future research, including studying changes in biodiversity and species-turnover within and among archipelagos, tests of classical island biogeography theory and as a baseline for ecological monitoring and conservation.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

APCalign: an R package workflow and app for aligning and updating flora names to the Australian Plant Census

Here we present "APCalign", an R package and accompanying browser-sourced application to align and update scientific names for Australian vascular plants to the most likely currently accepted name using the Australian Plant Census (APC) or a name in the Australian Plant Names Index (APNI). Scientific names are the label assigned to unique taxon concepts by the scientific community, but this common terminology is most useful if a taxon concept is consistently referred to by the same name. These links can be broken due to either spelling mistakes or taxonomic changes. Automated tools are required to resolve taxon lists, aligning and updating long lists of possibly erroneous scientific names to the most likely currently accepted names. It is essential that tools specific to the APC/APNI be developed, as these lists specify an endorsed national-level nomenclature used in government legislation and include the uniquely Australian concept of phrase names, absent in global taxonomic datasets. To align input names to names within the APC or APNI, "APCalign" works progressively through a sequence of checks that combine different permutations of the input name, exact versus fuzzy matches, matches that consider the entire name input versus a subset of words, and character strings that indicate a name can only be resolved to a genus or family. The aligned names are then, when possible, updated to a currently accepted taxon concept within the APC. This package should facilitate all research outputs that require diverse scientific name lists to be merged or outdated lists to be updated.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2023

The AusTraits Plant Dictionary

Traits with intuitive names, a clear scope and explicit description are essential for all trait databases. Reanalysis of data from a single database, or analyses that integrate data across multiple databases, can only occur if researchers are confident the trait concepts are consistent within and across sources. The lack of a unified, comprehensive resource for plant trait definitions has previously limited the utility of trait databases. Here we describe the AusTraits Plant Dictionary (APD), which extends the trait definitions included in the new trait database AusTraits. The development process of the APD included three steps: review and formalisation of the scope of each trait and the accompanying trait description; addition of trait meta-data; and publication in both human and machine-readable forms. Trait definitions include keywords, references and links to related trait concepts in other databases, and the traits are grouped into a hierarchy for easy searching. As well as improving the usability of AusTraits, the Dictionary will foster the integration of trait data across global and regional plant trait databases.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Socioeconomics and biogeography jointly drive geographic biases in our knowledge of plant traits: a global assessment of the Raunkiaerian shortfall in plants

The traits of plants determine how they interact with each other and their environment, constituting key knowledge for diverse fields. The lack of comprehensive knowledge of plant traits (the "Raunkiaerian shortfall") poses a major, cross-disciplinary, barrier to scientific advancement. Spatial biases in trait coverage may also lead to erroneous conclusions affecting ecosystem management and conservation planning. Thus, there is an urgent need to assess the spatial completeness of plant trait data, understand drivers of geographic biases, and to identify solutions for filling regional gaps. Here, we leverage a comprehensive set of regional species checklists for vascular plants and trait data for 2,027 traits and 128,929 plant species from the TRY database to assess trait data completeness across the globe. We show that trait data availability in TRY is associated with socioeconomic and biological factors influencing sampling likelihood: trait completeness was positively associated with mean species range size, research expenditure, and human population density and negatively associated with endemism and vascular plant species richness. Integration of a second, regional trait database (AusTraits) more than doubled trait completeness for the continent covered, indicating that the creation and integration of regional databases can rapidly expand trait completeness. Plain Language SummaryThe traits of plants determine how they interact with each other and their environment. Our knowledge of plant traits is incomplete, limiting scientific advancement as well as our ability to manage ecosystems and plan conservation actions. We show that there are large biases in trait data availability which are associated with both biological factors (range size, endemism, species richness) and socioeconomic factors (research expenditure, human population density). We also show how regionally-focused efforts can help rapidly expand trait data availability.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Coordinated Shifts In Allocation Among Reproductive Tissues Across 14 Coexisting Plant Species

Plant species differ in the amounts of energy allocated to different reproductive tissues, driving differences in their ecology and energy flows within ecosystems. While it is widely agreed that energy allocation is key to reproductive outcomes, few studies have estimated how reproductive effort (RE) is partitioned among different pools, for multiple species in a community. In plants, RE can be partitioned in several meaningful ways: seed versus non-seed tissues; into flowers that form seeds and those that fail to develop; into pre-versus post-pollination tissues, and into successful versus aborted ovules. Evolutionary theory suggests several hypotheses about how these tissues should be coordinated across species. To quantify variation in allocation to different reproductive tissues, we collected detailed RE measurements for a year from 14 perennial species in a recurrent-fire coastal heath community in eastern Australia. Overall we found that total accessory costs - the proportion of RE not directly invested in provisioning the seed - were very large, varying from 95.8% to 99.8% across the study species. These results suggest that studies using seed or fruit production as measures of RE may underestimate it by 10-to 500-fold. We propose a suitable alternative that well-approximates true RE. When comparing species, we found strong support for three evolutionary trade-offs that are predicted to arise when a given energy pool is divided into different tissue masses and counts across species: 1) between successful pollen-attraction costs and mature ovule count, 2) between total reproductive costs and seed count, and 3) between seedset and relative investment in pollen-attraction costs. As a result of these trade-offs, species were also predicted to show coordinated shifts in the amounts invested in floral construction, in seedset and seed size. These shifts in investment were indeed observed, with the amount allocated to discarded tissues increasing with seed size and the amount allocated to pollen-attraction decreasing with seed size. It is already well-established that the seed size axis aligns with the colonization-competition life history spectrum; here we show that relative construction costs of pollen-attraction versus provisioning tissues and seedset are also part of this trajectory, expanding our understanding of the relatives sizes of floral and fruiting structures observed across angiosperms.

ecology↗