Inventory revises down Amazon tree species list

Scientists report that the Amazon region has more than 6,700 species of native trees, a figure substantially lower than the 16,200 species estimated in previous reports.

Amazon Rainforest. Image credit: Martin St-Amant/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

"The difference between previous estimates and the current figures from this new study just highlight the huge gap in taxonomy that needs filling”, said Domingos Cardoso, from the Biology Institute at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil.

The inventory of plant species was carried out by scientists from the eight countries covered by the Amazon rainforest, along with colleagues from the United States and Europe.

They verified that a total of 14,003 species of seed plant (any plant that bears seeds) exist in the Amazon forest stretching from Brazil to Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, the Guianas, and Suriname. Legumes are the most numerous, numbering almost 1,380 species.

After carefully checking existing databases of Amazonian plant species located in regions up to an altitude of 1,000 metres, they determined that a number of species were included in three earlier studies (2016, 2016 and 2009) in error. For one study, this amounted to 3,794 species or 40 per cent of the total number of species recorded.

These mistakes ranged from including the same tree plant with different names, or classifying as Amazonian native plants from other Brazilian regions or other parts of the world, to classifying bushes or plants as trees.

To produce the new catalogue, they used taxonomic information that has been updated and verified by hundreds of specialists from all over the world, such as the data available on Flora de Brasil 2020.

Flora de Brasil is a digital platform that gathers data from hundreds of years of field work in the Amazon region, with input from countless taxonomists. (SciDev.Net)

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Zebra stripes may 'dazzle' pathogen-packing horse flies

Scientists from the University of Bristol and UC Davis say zebras may have gotten their stripes to confuse ectoparasites, such as flies.

'Space Butterfly' Is Home to Hundreds of Baby Stars

What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars.

'Terminators' on the sun trigger plasma tsunamis, start of new solar cycles

Scientists paint a picture of how solar cycles suddenly die, potentially causing tsunamis of plasma to race through the sun's interior and trigger the birth of the next sunspot cycle only a few weeks later.

Selective amnesia: how rats and humans are able to actively forget distracting memories

Our ability to selectively forget distracting memories is shared with other mammals, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge.

Plastic debris linked to coral disease, death

An international group of researchers has found that plastic trash entering the world’s oceans attracts microbes that cause corals to sicken and die.

Expanding the Genetic Alphabet

Scientists have created the first living organism that can grow and reproduce using DNA base pairs that aren’t found in nature. The achievement is a major step toward creating novel therapeutics and nanomaterials.