The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies four sites across Scotland—Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore—each with its own specialist collection. The RBGE's living collection consists of more than 13,302 plant species (34,422 accessions), whilst the herbarium contains in excess of 3 million preserved specimens.The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government. The Edinburgh site is the main garden and the headquarters of the public body, which is led by Regius Keeper Simon Milne.
Taxonomic uncertainty is prevalent across many biological groups. Yet, it remains overlooked in ecology, evolution, and conservation, leading to potential misinterpretations of biodiversity patterns. Here, we argue that this uncertainty emerges from the interaction between biological processes shaping natural lineages and human efforts to name and classify them. Based on this, we propose a set of metrics to quantify confidence in species boundaries and to track the history of taxonomic change and stability. We show how these metrics can be embedded into biodiversity analyses, from mapping uncertainty across taxa and geographic regions to assigning weights to species and deriving more realistic error ranges in ecological models. Making taxonomic uncertainty explicit advances biodiversity science and strengthens conservation decisions.
Excess reactive nitrogen (Nr) emitted from farming (NHx) and fossil fuels (NOx) is a major global threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function. Environmental Nr is often monitored using bioindicators such as lichens, which provide valuable insights in the absence of instrumental monitoring stations. As key bioindicators, lichen responses to Nr have been widely studied using either short-term highly controlled laboratory experiments or field sampling, linking functional aspects of lichen biology with real-world outcomes. However, a missing component in the available evidence base could be provided by field-scale experiments to isolate the response of lichens to contrasting Nr levels over longer time periods. Here, we investigated the response of the bioindicator lichen Evernia prunastri to contrasting ammonia (NH3) concentrations within a novel field-scale experiment and over a 12-week period. We measured fungal cell membrane damage and algal chlorophyll content as markers related to lichen tissue nitrogen accumulation, revealing impacts on the fungal and algal symbionts and explaining net outcomes on lichen relative growth rates. We compared the results of the field-scale experiment to trends observed in the real world. Our results suggest that E. prunastri tissue nitrogen content becomes saturated at 1.3 % with long-term NH3 concentrations of c. 2 mu g m-3, beyond which the species experiences unmitigated physiological damage. This response is however critically dependent on the exposure duration, which interacts with atmospheric NH3 to constrain acclimation through increased chlorophyll content, while causing accumulative damage to fungal cell membranes that compromises growth and leads to eventual mortality.
Despite growing global investments in ecosystem restoration, seed supply for native tree species remains a major bottleneck, particularly in the Global South where species diversity is high and natural seed sources dwindling due to land use change. This slows down restoration efforts and reduces their biodiversity, climate and socio-economic benefits. We present a spatially explicit methodology for assessing the availability of site-adapted tree seed for restoration, which combines environmental clustering to define seed zones, MaxEnt species distribution models for restoration target species, and data on existing tree seed sources. Species-specific seed source gaps are identified as those zones within species' distribution ranges without any seed sources. Application of the method to 21 native pilot species in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines revealed that, on average, only 34% of seed zones had designated seed sources, despite the species being widely used in restoration. An analysis of community-managed forests in Mindanao, the Philippines, showed that such forests can potentially fill the identified gaps in seed source availability, but challenges remain in registering and supporting community-managed forests as seed sources. Ninety-seven percent of the seed sources were predicted to remain within the species' suitable habitat under future climates, but the availability of sources in specific seed zones can reduce with climate change projected to shift the seed zone boundaries. The gap analysis methodology enables countries to strategically identify priority areas for seed source development. By addressing critical seed supply constraints, this approach strengthens national capacity to deliver effective, inclusive, and climate-resilient restoration at scale.
The biodiversity response to climate change will, for many species, be determined by continued availability of suitable microclimatic space locally, and the ability to colonise into such refugia through dispersal. This study measured and modelled microclimatic vapour pressure deficit (VPD) for three contrasting woodland study sites, to purposefully extend microclimatic modelling to lichen epiphytes. Statistical downscaling indicated that VPD is explained by macroclimatic moisture input (precipitation) and temperature (saturated vapour pressure), with important and locally modifying effects of elevation, landscape topography, and canopy structure. Allowing for over-fitting controls, niche models for lichen epiphyte abundance were improved when including microclimatic VPD in addition to precipitation. A niche model for lichen indicators - species which determine the conservation status of UK lowland temperate rainforest - was projected at a 5 m grid-scale for a climate baseline, and three climate change scenarios (2040s, RCP 4.5; 2060s, RCP 6; 2080s, RCP 8.5), over five temperate rainforest National Nature Reserves (NNRs). Resilience of each NNR was estimated as the proportion of extant microhabitats that have an equivalent or improved microclimate (relative to the climate baseline) at incrementing spatial distances from 10 to 100 m. Despite microclimatic buffering, resilience of the NNRs was found to be limited under their current configuration. Resilience was higher for more northerly (cooler) sites, and for sites with a greater woodland extent. Resilience could be further enhanced by woodland expansion for topographically variable landscapes that have been historically deforested, with tree regeneration/planting targeted to situations that offer future microclimatic refugia.
Documented living plant collections distinguish botanic gardens from other green spaces and horticultural landscapes. With more than 3,500 collections worldwide, these institutions steward at least 105,634 species-around 30% of all land plant diversity-while fulfilling amenity, educational, scientific and conservation roles. However, twenty-first-century challenges demand a re-evaluation of how these collections are documented and managed. We argue that meeting these emerging needs requires higher standards of coordinated information management and innovation in data infrastructures across the global network. This Perspective critically examines data management practices of living collections supporting scientific research and conservation, from institutional to global levels. We identify the renewed demands on living collections, highlight exemplar global data infrastructures, define data challenges inherent to living collections and explore how current systems fall short in enabling a connected global system. Finally, we outline a vision for high-performance collections, fully integrated into a robust global data ecosystem.
