Niche‐tracking as a collecting method: Habitat‐targeted search strategies for taxon‐focused botany

Vollständiger Abstract

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Societal Impact Statement Biodiversity science depends on more than collecting plants—it depends on how we search for them. Although GPS and digital maps have transformed fieldwork, they can also encourage repeated visits to the same easy‐to‐access sites, leaving other habitats and populations unknown to science. This paper formalizes “niche‐tracking,” a well‐known practical approach in which botanists combine scientific knowledge with traditional and local ecological knowledge to track the conditions where target plants are most likely to occur. By making this search strategy explicit and reportable, we improve transparency in biodiversity data and increase the chances of finding new populations—especially for rare, threatened, or poorly known species. Summary Botanical collecting protocols are highly standardized for specimen preparation, labeling, and curation, yet the search strategy used to locate target taxa is often reported vaguely. In practice, taxon‐focused fieldwork rarely samples at random. Collectors rely on prior ecological knowledge from floras and taxonomic treatments, herbarium labels, personal field experience, and increasingly digital maps, as well as traditional and local ecological knowledge. Here, we define and name this tacit approach as “niche‐tracking,” a field collecting method in which botanists intentionally track the multidimensional ecological niche of a taxon—integrating abiotic and biotic dimensions—to decide where and when to search. By prioritizing habitat space rather than repeatedly revisiting the same georeferenced localities (“GPS‐chasing”), niche‐tracking can broaden the environmental and geographic scope of collecting effort and increase the likelihood of bring to light additional populations still unknown to science, which is especially valuable for rare, threatened, or poorly known taxa. We clarify that niche‐tracking is not ecological niche modeling: It is a flexible field methodology that can complement quantitative models while leveraging niche dimensions that models often under‐represent. We also discuss when niche‐tracking improves collecting efficiency and botanical documentation.