Using large language models to extract plant functional traits from unstructured text.

Premise: Functional plant ecology seeks to understand how functional traits govern species distributions, community assembly, and ecosystem functions. While global trait datasets have advanced the field, substantial gaps remain, and extracting trait information from text in books, research articles, and online sources via machine learning offers a valuable complement to costly field campaigns.

Methods: We propose a natural language processing pipeline that extracts traits from unstructured species descriptions by using classification models for categorical traits and question-answering models for numerical traits.

Environmental filtering, not dispersal history, explains global patterns of phylogenetic turnover in seed plants at deep evolutionary timescales.

Environmental filtering and dispersal history limit plant distributions and affect biogeographical patterns, but how their relative importance varies across evolutionary timescales is unresolved. Phylogenetic beta diversity quantifies dissimilarity in evolutionary relatedness among assemblages and might help resolve the ecological and biogeographical mechanisms structuring biodiversity. Here, we examined the effects of environmental dissimilarity and geographical distance on phylogenetic and taxonomic turnover for ~270,000 seed plant species globally and across evolutionary timescales.

Islands are key for protecting the world's plant endemism.

Islands are renowned as evolutionary laboratories and support many species that are not found elsewhere. Islands are also of great conservation concern, with many of their endemic species currently threatened or extinct. Here we present a standardized checklist of all known vascular plants that occur on islands and document their geographical and phylogenetic distribution and conservation risk.

Island biogeography of the megadiverse plant family Asteraceae.

The megadiverse plant family Asteraceae forms an iconic component of island floras including many spectacular radiations, but a global picture of its insular diversity is lacking. Here, we uncover the global biogeographical and evolutionary patterns of Asteraceae on islands to reveal the magnitude and potential causes of their evolutionary success. We compile a global checklist of Asteraceae species native and endemic to islands and combine it with macroecological analyses and a phylogenetic review of island radiations.

Regional invasion history and land use shape the prevalence of non-native species in local assemblages.

The ecological impact of non-native species arises from their establishment in local assemblages. However, the rates of non-native spread in new regions and their determinants have not been comprehensively studied. Here, we combined global databases documenting the occurrence of non-native species and residence of non-native birds, mammals, and vascular plants at regional and local scales to describe how the likelihood of non-native occurrence and their proportion in local assemblages relate with their residence time and levels of human usage in different ecosystems.

Mutualisms weaken the latitudinal diversity gradient among oceanic islands.

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) dominates global patterns of diversity, but the factors that underlie the LDG remain elusive. Here we use a unique global dataset to show that vascular plants on oceanic islands exhibit a weakened LDG and explore potential mechanisms for this effect. Our results show that traditional physical drivers of island biogeography-namely area and isolation-contribute to the difference between island and mainland diversity at a given latitude (that is, the island species deficit), as smaller and more distant islands experience reduced colonization.

Reassessment of the risks of climate change for terrestrial ecosystems.

Forecasting the risks of climate change for species and ecosystems is necessary for developing targeted conservation strategies. Previous risk assessments mapped the exposure of the global land surface to changes in climate. However, this procedure is unlikely to robustly identify priority areas for conservation actions because nonlinear physiological responses and colimitation processes ensure that ecological changes will not map perfectly to the forecast climatic changes.

Plant invasion and naturalization are influenced by genome size, ecology and economic use globally.

Human factors and plant characteristics are important drivers of plant invasions, which threaten ecosystem integrity, biodiversity and human well-being. However, while previous studies often examined a limited number of factors or focused on a specific invasion stage (e.g.

Spatial variability in herbaceous plant phenology is mostly explained by variability in temperature but also by photoperiod and functional traits.

Whereas temporal variability of plant phenology in response to climate change has already been well studied, the spatial variability of phenology is not well understood. Given that phenological shifts may affect biotic interactions, there is a need to investigate how the variability in environmental factors relates to the spatial variability in herbaceous species' phenology by at the same time considering their functional traits to predict their general and species-specific responses to future climate change. In this project, we analysed phenology records of 148 herbaceous species, which were observed for a single year by the PhenObs network in 15 botanical gardens.

Diurnal temperature range as a key predictor of plants' elevation ranges globally.

A prominent hypothesis in ecology is that larger species ranges are found in more variable climates because species develop broader environmental tolerances, predicting a positive range size-temperature variability relationship. However, this overlooks the extreme temperatures that variable climates impose on species, with upper or lower thermal limits more likely to be exceeded. Accordingly, we propose the 'temperature range squeeze' hypothesis, predicting a negative range size-temperature variability relationship.

The poleward naturalization of intracontinental alien plants.

Plant introductions outside their native ranges by humans have led to substantial ecological consequences. While we have gained considerable knowledge about intercontinental introductions, the distribution and determinants of intracontinental aliens remain poorly understood. Here, we studied naturalized (i.

Small genome size and variation in ploidy levels support the naturalization of vascular plants but constrain their invasive spread.

Karyological characteristics are among the traits underpinning the invasion success of vascular plants. Using 11 049 species, we tested the effects of genome size and ploidy levels on plant naturalization (species forming self-sustaining populations where they are not native) and invasion (naturalized species spreading rapidly and having environmental impact). The probability that a species naturalized anywhere in the world decreased with increasing monoploid genome size (DNA content of a single chromosome set).

Assembly of functional diversity in an oceanic island flora.

Oceanic island floras are well known for their morphological peculiarities and exhibit striking examples of trait evolution. These morphological shifts are commonly attributed to insularity and are thought to be shaped by the biogeographical processes and evolutionary histories of oceanic islands. However, the mechanisms through which biogeography and evolution have shaped the distribution and diversity of plant functional traits remain unclear.

Global conservation prioritization for the Orchidaceae.

Quantitative assessments of endemism, evolutionary distinctiveness and extinction threat underpin global conservation prioritization for well-studied taxa, such as birds, mammals, and amphibians. However, such information is unavailable for most of the world's taxa. This is the case for the Orchidaceae, a hyperdiverse and cosmopolitan family with incomplete phylogenetic and threat information.

Links to rare climates do not translate into distinct traits for island endemics.

Current models of island biogeography treat endemic and non-endemic species as if they were functionally equivalent, focussing primarily on species richness. Thus, the functional composition of island biotas in relation to island biogeographical variables remains largely unknown. Using plant trait data (plant height, leaf area and flower length) for 895 native species in the Canary Islands, we related functional trait distinctiveness and climate rarity for endemic and non-endemic species and island ages.

Nitrogen-fixing symbiotic bacteria act as a global filter for plant establishment on islands.

Island biogeography has classically focused on abiotic drivers of species distributions. However, recent work has highlighted the importance of mutualistic biotic interactions in structuring island floras. The limited occurrence of specialist pollinators and mycorrhizal fungi have been found to restrict plant colonization on oceanic islands.