What is a tree in the Mediterranean Basin hotspot? A critical analysis
Background: Tree species represent 20% of the vascular plant species worldwide and they play a crucial role in the global functioning of the biosphere. The Mediterranean Basin is one of the 36 world biodiversity hotspots, and it is estimated that forests covered 82% of the landscape before the first human impacts, thousands of years ago. However, the spatial distribution of the Mediterranean biodiversity is still imperfectly known, and a focus on tree species constitutes a key issue for understanding forest functioning and develop conservation strategies. Methods: We provide the first comprehensive checklist of all native tree taxa (species and subspecies) present in the Mediterranean-Europ…
WOODIV, a database of occurrences, functional traits, and phylogenetic data for all Euro-Mediterranean trees
Trees play a key role in the structure and function of many ecosystems worldwide. In the Mediterranean Basin, forests cover approximately 22% of the total land area hosting a large number of endemics (46 species). Despite its particularities and vulnerability, the biodiversity of Mediterranean trees is not well known at the taxonomic, spatial, functional, and genetic levels required for conservation applications. The WOODIV database fills this gap by providing reliable occurrences, four functional traits (plant height, seed mass, wood density, and specific leaf area), and sequences from three DNA-regions (rbcL, matK, and trnH-psbA), together with modelled occurrences and a phylogeny for all…
Additional file 1: of What is a tree in the Mediterranean Basin hotspot? A critical analysis
Table S1. Checklist of the tree taxa (species and subspecies) occuring in theMediterranean-European region, from Portugal to Cyprus. The definition of the families follows the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG III 2009; APG IV 2016). Theretained nomenclature of the tree taxa is compared with those of the Euro+Med database ( http://www.emplantbase.org/home.html ), the volume series Chorology of trees and shrubs in south-westAsia and adjacent regions (Browicz 1982–1996) and the World Checklist Kew. For the occurence of eachtree taxa in a country or a large island, we indicate the endemism status, the cultivated status, theautochthonous (native: N) or allochthonous (introduced: I) status. Taxa f…