Piecing together the biogeographic history of Chenopodium vulvaria L. using botanical literature and collections
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biodiversity, Biogeography, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Plant Science
- Keywords
- text analysis, habitat change, introduction pathways, bioclimatic modelling, distribution, naturalisation, herbarium specimens
- Copyright
- © 2014 Groom
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Piecing together the biogeographic history of Chenopodium vulvaria L. using botanical literature and collections. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e536v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.536v1
Abstract
This study demonstrates the value of legacy literature and historic collections as a source of data on environmental history. Chenopodium vulvaria L. has declined in Northern Europe and is of conservation concern in several countries, whereas in other countries it has naturalised and is considered an alien weed. It is hypothesised that much of its former distribution was the result of repeated introductions from its native range in southern Europe and that its decline in northern Europe is the result of habitat change and a reduction in number of propagules imported to the north. An historical analysis of its ecology and distribution was conducted by mining legacy literature and historic botanical collections. Text analysis of habitat descriptions written on specimens and published in botanical literature covering a period of more than 200 years indicate that the habitat and introduction pathways of C. vulvaria have changed with time. Using the naturalised alien range in a climate niche model it is possible to project the range in Europe. By comparing this predicted model with a similar model created from all observations it is clear that there is a large discrepancy between the realised and predicted distributions. It is concluded that if C. vulvaria was native to northern Europe, then it was only ever a rare species, however it was more common in the 18th and 19th centuries due to a combination of repeated introductions and the creation of suitable habitats by people.
Supplemental Information
A thesaurus of the words contributing to each habitat category
A list of all the words and phrases contributing to each habitat category in the analysis of the Chenopodium vulvaria corpus of habitat descriptions.
Datasets used from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Atlas of Living Australia
A list of the datasets and a link to their metadata supplied by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility accessed 08 Nov 2013 and the Atlas of Living Australia accessed 25 February 2013 containing observations of Chenopodium vulvaria.
Citations to the sources of observations and habitat descriptions used in the paper
The references to the sources of observations and habitat descriptions of Chenopodium vulvaria.