How many bromeliads are there? History and future perspectives of species scientific discovery in the pineapple family

Vollständiger Abstract

Worum geht es in dieser Arbeit?

Societal Impact Statement It remains unclear how many plant species are not yet recorded by science. We illustrated the process by which species of the pineapple family in tropical America have been newly described to science to date, and we estimated how many species may still await scientific discovery in this group. We found that almost half of the species remain scientifically undiscovered and that the scientific discovery of new species is increasingly done by regional scientists. Our results stress the gap in the scientific account of tropical plant diversity and point towards the work of regional scientists from the Global South as a major contribution to overcoming this limitation. Summary In many taxa, the expected number of species is still uncertain, hampering conservation, especially in the diverse tropical regions of Earth. Here, we use the plant family Bromeliaceae as a model to explore the history and future of species scientific discovery from the Neotropics global biodiversity hotspot. We use a newly curated complete list of described species together with species geographic distributions and information on taxonomic authors to explore patterns of past species description. Furthermore, we use logistic models to estimate the expected number of species in the family, the subfamilies, the largest genera and the relationship with geographic range. In the past, species scientific discovery was dominated by researchers from Europe (mid‐18th to mid‐20th century), then researchers from the United States (middle to end of 20th century) and finally researchers from Latin America (21st century). The average number of species described per year increased from 0.6 between 1750 and 1800 to 33.8 between 2001 and 2025. Furthermore, description shifted from widespread species to species with smaller ranges, mostly from Brazil and the Andes from Bolivia to Mexico. We project the expected number of Bromeliaceae species at 6600 to 7500, leaving the current number of species described only at 56% to 49%. Our results illustrate changes in the history of species description in the last centuries, confirm the progression from broad range to smaller range species as the taxonomic treatment of the groups progressed and illustrate Brazil, Mexico and the Andean region as hotspots for future species description.