Societal Impact Statement Plants sustain all life, providing the energetic and structural basis of ecosystems, but they face a growing risk of extinction. Reversing this decline requires an understanding of how scientific knowledge is distributed among species and identification of the biases and gaps that hinder effective responses to the threats they face. However, we reveal here that most threatened species remain understudied, while research focuses on nonthreatened species and a few species of economic value. Given this imbalance, we offer some suggestions for plant scientists, aiming to address gaps and biases and expand scientific knowledge.Summary Scientific knowledge plays a vital role in guiding evidence-based conservation efforts. However, not all species receive equal attention, and the scientific literature reflects structural biases that are often difficult to quantify. Here, we assessed how scientific attention to plant species in Brazil varies across extinction risk categories and identified the intrinsic and contextual factors shaping their representation in scientific studies. We analyzed 7524 native Brazilian species formally assessed for extinction risk, integrating systematic Web of Science searches with a complementary statistical framework to quantify and compare species-level visibility and publication dynamics. The most threatened species receive less scientific attention, including a lower proportion of species studied and fewer publications per species throughout the study period compared to nonthreatened species. Although multiple factors influence scientific attention, economic value emerged as the strongest predictor of publication volume, exceeding conservation urgency and other factors. Scientific attention to Brazilian plants is misaligned with conservation needs, introducing systematic biases into the knowledge base that underpins research prioritization, conservation planning, and environmental policy.

Pollination syndromes reflect the convergence of floral traits among plants sharing the same pollinator guild. However, bee-pollinated orchids exhibit striking variation in color and size. This diversity reflects the multiple reward strategies that evolved within the family, each interacting differently with bee sensory biases. Here, we tested whether the complex floral visual displays of orchids differ in signal identity and intensity among reward systems. We also considered intrafloral modularity, measured as the color differentiation among flower parts, and color-size integration. For this, we measured and modeled floral morphometric and reflectance data from sepals, petals, lip tips, and lip bases under bee vision from 95 tropical Epidendroid species to compare chromatic and achromatic contrasts, spectral purity, and mean reflectance across wavebands, plus flower and display size, among reward systems. Reward types included 19 food-deceptive, 8 nectar-offering, 10 oil-offering, 11 fragrance-offering, and 47 orchid species of unknown reward strategy. Principal component analyses on 34 color and 9 size variables summarized major gradients of visual trait variation: first component (19.1%) represented overall green-red reflectance and achromatic contrasts, whereas the second (16.5%) captured chromatic contrast-size covariation. Reward systems differed mostly in signal identity rather than signal intensity. Flower chromatic contrasts presented strong integration with flower size, while achromatic contrasts were negatively associated with display size. While deceptive and nectar-offering orchids tend toward larger solitary flowers with bluer and spectrally purer displays, oil- and fragrance-offering orchids tend toward smaller, brownish, or yellow to green flowers, with larger inflorescences. Rewardless orchids presented more achromatically conspicuous signals than rewarding orchids, but smaller displays. Orchid species clustered by reward both in PCA spaces and in bee hexagon color space. Deceptive orchids were typically associated with UV + White colors, oil orchids with UV + Yellow lip tips, and fragrance orchids with UV-Black lip bases and UV-Green lip tips. Together, these results indicate that orchid reward systems promote qualitative rather than quantitative differentiation in visual signals, integrating display color and size. These long-evolved distinct signals potentially enable foraging bees to discriminate among resource types within the community floral market. Our results demonstrate that color and flower display size are important predictors of reward strategy, likely used by foraging bees for phenotype-reward associations, thus mediating the evolution of floral signals.

The extent of occurrence (EOO) is a key metric used by the IUCN to assess the conservation status of species. However, EOO often overestimates species’ ranges, particularly those with narrow ranges, potentially resulting in the underestimation of their extinction risk. In contrast, the area of habitat (AOH) has emerged recently, as a more accurate alternative for creating species range maps and refining conservation analyses. Here, we investigate the relationship between EOO and AOH across a gradient of environmental heterogeneity. We hypothesize that AOH-to-EOO ratio decreases as environmental heterogeneity increases, which may lead to the overestimation of species ranges in areas with diverse climates or varying elevations. Using a Random Forest classifier, we tested whether AOH could be used to estimate the extinction risk. For that, we used the most comprehensive dataset of georeferenced occurrences of angiosperms in the high-altitude grasslands of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. We conducted the analyses using ‘AOHr’, a new R package proposed here, that enables the estimation of AOH, potential conservation assessment, visualization of ranges, and exporting shapefiles. Our results suggest that over 85

Brazil’s recent environmental licensing reform exposes a contradiction between national regulation and international climate and biodiversity commitments. Law No. 15.190/2025 narrows analytical scope, expands exemptions, weakens preventive mechanisms, and shifts responsibilities to subnational authorities with uneven technical capacity. Although environmental impact assessments remain formally required, the law reduces their applicability and overlooks indirect, cumulative, and synergistic impacts. It also omits ecosystem services, despite scientific consensus on their role in climate regulation, water provision, soil protection, and pollination. This omission underestimates socio-environmental risks and undermines resilience, food security, and long-term planning. This contradiction is evident in Brazil’s renewed international engagement, including its role as host of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém. To align national regulation with global commitments, integrating ecosystem services into licensing, alongside transparency and impact data disclosure, is urgently needed.

Most flowering plant species rely on animal pollinators to reproduce, but insufficient pollen receipt, or pollen limitation, commonly occurs and is mediated by plant traits. Pollen limitation could either exacerbate extinction threat or arise as a consequence of population and range declines in threatened plants, leading to the expectation that pollen limitation should be higher in threatened compared to non-threatened plants. To test this, we perform a meta-analysis on a global dataset of pollen limitation from 2633 pollen supplementation experiments, integrating plant threat status and thirteen reproduction and life history traits. Threatened plant species have 26% higher levels of pollen limitation than non-threatened species. This pattern is moderated by plant traits and geographic location: we find higher levels of pollen limitation for threatened compared to non-threatened species for pollinator-dependent plants and for plants found in Asia and temperate zones. Using path analysis, we find that plant traits, study region, and threat status are causally linked to pollen limitation. We suggest that plant traits such as autofertility, which strongly predict pollen limitation, should be considered in global databases on plant threat. Further, preventing pollen limitation through habitat and pollinator management is a promising path to preventing plant extinction.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS:Ambophily, an intriguing pollination system in which plant species present adaptations to both biotic and abiotic pollination, has been scarcely reported. Most studies have been conducted with a single or few related species from wind-pollinated genera. We here assess for the first time the frequency of ambophily at the community level. METHODS:We evaluated pollen carried by wind in 63 animal-pollinated species from a Brazilian campos de altitude. For those with pollen carried by wind, we evaluated the contribution of wind and animals to seed production with controlled pollination experiments, as well as floral traits and floral visitor assemblages. KEY RESULTS:Pollen of 23 species was carried by wind (~37 %). Animals and wind contributed to the reproduction of seven species (~11 %), including one pollinated by hummingbirds, large bees and wind. These seven ambophilous species presented unrestrictive floral morphologies and generalist pollination. CONCLUSIONS:We found a high frequency of ambophily in a single community (11 %), which represented an increment of ~5 % of species relative to all ambophilous species reported in the literature so far. Investigating pollen transport by wind in zoophilous species combined with controlled experiments helped detect ambophily in species that are usually ignored in wind pollination studies. Our results showed that putative zoophilous species may actually be ambophilous, suggesting that the selective pressures towards ambophily also occur in zoophilous lineages.

Background and Aims The majority of the Earth's land area is currently occupied by humans. Measuring how terrestrial plants reproduce in these pervasive environments is essential for understanding their long-term viability and their ability to adapt to changing environments.Methods We conducted hierarchical and phylogenetically independent meta-analyses to assess the overall effects of anthropogenic land-use changes on pollination, and male and female fitness in terrestrial plants.Key Results We found negative global effects of land-use change (i.e. mainly habitat loss and fragmentation) on pollination and on female and male fitness of terrestrial flowering plants. Negative effects were stronger in plants with self-incompatibility systems and in plants pollinated by invertebrates, regardless of life form and sexual expression. Pollination and female fitness of pollination-generalist and pollination-specialist plants were similarly negatively affected by land-use change, whereas male fitness of specialist plants showed no effects.Conclusions Our findings indicate that angiosperm populations remaining in fragmented habitats negatively affect pollination, and female and male fitness, which will probably decrease the recruitment, survival and long-term viability of plant populations remaining in fragmented landscapes. We underline the main current gaps of knowledge for future research agendas and call not only for a decrease in the current rates of land-use changes across the world but also to embark on active restoration efforts to increase the area and connectivity of remaining natural habitats.

Callianthe sellowiana is a high-altitude species endemic to the Atlantic Forest that exhibits floral traits overlapping between ornithophily (hummingbird pollination) and chiropterophily (bat pollination), with highly variable flower color and shape and a yet unstudied reproductive system. We conducted observations and experiments in the upper montane Brazilian Atlantic Forest (2000 m a.s.l.), which revealed that both bat and hummingbird pollinators contribute similarly to fruit and seed set, with no significant difference between diurnal and nocturnal exclusion treatments. However, combined pollination yielded higher reproductive success, indicating functional complementarity and equal pollination effectiveness. Floral traits match both pollinators, with wider corollas at night aiding bat access and enhancing acoustic signals and narrower corollas during the day facilitating hummingbird pollination. Spectral analyses revealed low UV reflectance with a peak in red wavelengths, and for most phenotypes high green reflectance, matching both bat and hummingbird visual systems. While hummingbird visitation remained stable across flowering seasons, bat visitation was highly variable, suggesting that C. sellowiana maintains a stable bimodal pollination strategy. Furthermore, pollen tube growth experiments showed that small amounts of cross-pollen are sufficient to promote successful pollen tube development, even in the presence of self-pollen. These findings reveal a strategy that may mitigate self-pollen interference in a self-incompatible species. Our results highlight the ecological importance of functional and temporal complementarity in bimodal pollination systems and underscore how mixed pollination strategies may enhance reproductive success and resilience in diverse pollinator environments.

Urbanization has reshaped the distribution of biodiversity on Earth, but we are only beginning to understand its effects on ecological communities. While urbanization may have homogenization effects strong enough to blur the large- scale patterns in interaction networks, urban community patterns may still be associated with climate gradients reflecting large- scale biogeographical processes. Using 103 hummingbird-plant mutualistic networks across continental Americas, including 176 hummingbird and 1,180 plant species, we asked how urbanization affects species interactions over large climate gradients. Urban networks were more generalized, exhibiting greater interaction overlap. Higher generalization was also associated with lower precipitation in both urban and natural areas, indicating that climate affects networks irrespective of habitat type. Urban habitats also showed lower hummingbird functional trait diversity and over/ underrepresentation of specific clades. From the plant side, urban communities had a higher prevalence of nonnative nectar plants, which were more frequently visited by the hummingbird species occurring in both urban and natural areas. Therefore, urbanization affected hummingbird-plant interactions through both the composition of species and traits, as well as floral resource availability. Taken together, we show that urbanization consistently modifies ecological communities and their interactions, but climate still plays a role in affecting the structure of these novel communities over the scale of continents.

Premise of research. Hermaphroditic flowering plants achieve reproductive success via both seed siring (male function) and seed production (female function). In pollinator-dependent plants, both gender functions depend on successful pollination, in which pollen is transferred from anthers to stigmas, resulting in seed production. However, it is still unclear how male (pollen removal) and female (pollen receipt and pollen tubes) components of pollination success are associated with each other and which community-level processes drive each function in coflowering communities.Methodology. In a pollen-limited environment with low pollinator visitation rates and most ovules left unfertilized, we measured pollen removal, pollen receipt, and pollen tubes across 41 species and tested their correlation and how floral density and reproductive traits predict each component.Pivotal results. One-quarter of the pollen remained on flowers on average, while disproportionate increases in pollen removal were often associated with small increases in pollen receipt and pollen tubes. Abundant plants suffered intraspecific competition, while interspecific individuals engaged in facilitative interactions via all components (pollen removal, pollen receipt, and pollen tubes) but in varying strengths. Plants with small display size and flowering synchronously with the plant community were at a disadvantage in terms of pollen removal but at an advantage in terms of pollen receipt and pollen tubes.Conclusions. The natural low pollinator availability may limit both gender functions, leading to the correlation between pollination success components. Nevertheless, opposing community-level processes drive each pollination success component in plants with small display size. Our results suggest that coflowering context is important to understand potential synergies and conflicts between gender functions at the pollinator attraction stage, which are common evolutionary consequences of bisexuality.

Some plant species have a kind of mixed pollination system—ambophily—which rely both on biotic and abiotic (most commonly wind) as pollen vectors. Ambophily remains poorly addressed in the pollination literature and may have been overlooked because existing studies do not quantify the wind contribution in animal-pollinated species. After observing pollen transport by the wind in an Orobanchaceae species with ornithophilous floral phenotype, we hypothesize that this species could be ambophilous. Esterhazya eitenorum Barringer is a (sub-)shrub endemic to a high-altitude grassland ( campos de altitude ) area in southeastern Brazil. Pollinated mainly by hummingbirds and secondarily by large bees, it presents features generally associated with ornithophily. Bird-pollinated species are not expected to be ambophilous, due to their high resource investment in floral construction and maintenance. However, here we detect ambophily in E. eitenorum by testing the potential for pollen export by the wind as well as seed set after floral visitor exclusion and spontaneous self-pollination treatments, and comparing these with natural conditions. Esterhazya eitenorum has an ambophilous pollination system, with effect size analyses between floral visitor exclusion treatments and natural conditions revealing significant contributions from both abiotic and biotic components. Although its floral phenotype corresponds to the main pollinator, the occurrence of ambophily in E. eitenorum underscores the need for an independent approach to the association of floral phenotypes with pollination vectors, in particular for the detection and better understanding of the evolution of mixed pollination systems.

Research on the food sources used by bees in agricultural landscapes is crucial to promote pollinator conservation measures in and around cultivated areas. This investigation aims to identify and quantify the pollen resources exploited by Schwarziana quadripunctata (Lepeletier 1836), assessing the trophic niche of this bee in agricultural areas with coffee plantations. Pollen analysis was conducted based on the pollen load of the corbiculae of 70 bees, sampled during the flowering period of two species of coffee trees in commercial plantations located in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo states, Brazil, in 2019 and 2021. A total of 78 pollen types from 23 botanical families were identified, with Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora comprising 92% of the samples. Cestrum sp. (2.3% - Solanaceae), Fabaceae sp. 1 (0.9%), Solanum sp. (0.75% - Solanaceae) and Chamaecrista sp. (0.71% - Fabaceae) were the next most prevalent. The dominance of the coffee tree pollen confirms the floral constancy of S. quadripunctata during periods of intense flowering. Excluding coffee pollen, the most represented families were Solanaceae (46.6% of the samples), Fabaceae (27.5%), Rubiaceae (8.51%), and Meliaceae (2.53%). The findings reveal that S. quadripunctata actively forages from sources other than coffee, even during the intense flowering of these plants, highlighting the importance of floral resources in the proximity of plantations. The use of pollen sources beyond the coffee tree highlights the importance of conserving nearby forest fragments and maintaining a diverse array of plants surrounding coffee trees even during coffee flowering.

Campos de altitude are high-altitude grasslands found in the mountain ranges of southeastern and southern Brazil, which are characterized by high species richness and endemism. Because of the difficulty in delimiting this vegetation type, measuring biodiversity patterns is challenging. Here, we compared the application of two methods using spatial data to estimate angiosperm diversity in campos de altitude: (1) filtering occurrence data by elevation, canopy height, location and keywords and; (2) the same as the first, however, adding a filter of “campos de altitude” in the vegetation type of the Flora e Funga do Brasil database. Also, we discuss conservation status, plant collections, endemism, vegetation data and similarity among 14 sites harboring campos de altitude. Our two resulting lists indicated between 1087 and 2398 angiosperm species and infraspecific taxa in campos de altitude, mostly belonging to Asteraceae and Poaceae and endemic to Brazil. Extrapolations of species richness suggest a potential number of up to 4000 species. Of the taxa assessed for conservation status, 53–65

Intra-individual variation in floral traits is widespread but yet poorly understood. Variations in flower size within individuals can have implications for plant reproductive success, hence may be under pollinator-mediated phenotypic selection. Most studies on pollinator-mediated selection only evaluate female reproductive success, although floral traits can be under stronger or opposing selection via male fitness. Here we evaluated selection on intra-individual variation and integration of floral traits via its effects on male reproductive success (pollen removal) on a hummingbird-pollinated species. We sampled flowers of Justicia sebastianopolitanae that were exposed to pollinators for 24 h and counted the number of pollen grains that remained in the anthers. We measured corolla length, corolla tube length, anther, and stigma height, as well as herkogamy, display size, and estimated the coefficient of variation (CV) of traits for each individual. We found that the greatest variation in floral traits occurs within individuals. Although intra-individual variation in anther height positively affected pollen removal, we did not detect significant selection, implying that intra-individual variation is not a target for pollinator-mediated selection through male fitness in this plant population. We also found selection on the mean of anther height, indicating the importance of the spatial separation between male and female structures. The variation in anther height may increase the area of pollen deposition on the pollinator's body. Therefore, intra-individual variation could increase the chance of an individual's pollen reaching more stigmas with different heights. We highlight that intra-individual variation should be more widely studied in the context of pollinator-mediated selection and its importance for the reproductive success of individuals in a population.

Globally, human activities impose threats to nature and the provision of ecosystem services, such as pollination. In this context, ecological restoration provides opportunities to create managed landscapes that maximize biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture, e.g., via provision of pollination services. Managing pollination services and restoration opportunities requires the engagement of distinct stakeholders embedded in diverse social institutions. Nevertheless, frameworks toward sustainable agriculture often overlook how stakeholders interact and access power in social arenas. We present a perspective integrating pollination services, ecological restoration, and public engagement for biodiversity conservation and agricultural production. We highlight the importance of a comprehensive assessment of pollination services, restoration opportunities identification, and a public engagement strategy anchored in institutional analysis of the social arenas involved in restoration efforts. Our perspective can therefore guide the implementation of practices from local to country scales to enhance biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture.

This repository contains the output list of angiosperms from the high‐altitude grasslands of the Atlantic forest.

We report the clinicopathological findings of the first series of 3 patients from Brazil with fumarate hydratase-deficient renal cell carcinoma. The clinicopathological findings disclosed a very aggressive tumor. All 3 pa-tients had solitary tumor at the left side, metastasis and advanced stage at the time of diagnosis; were females with a median age of 40 years; had a history of uterine leiomyomas; and, at follow-up two patients are deceased and one patient alive. The microscopic findings of these 3 patients are in accordance with the literature disclosing a variety of morphologic features being papillary arrangement, eosinophilic cytoplasm, and prominent nucleoli surrounded by clear halo the constant and most frequent findings. Previously not reported in this tumor, we describe presence of cannibalism, lymphocytic emperipolesis, and cytoplasmic vacuoles with eosinophilic inclusions associated with overexpression of p62 in immunohistochemistry which is considered to be evidence of defective autophagy. Lymphocytic emperipolesis was a more frequent finding than cannibalism and immuno-histochemistry for p62 was overexpressed only in the 2 patients disclosing cytoplasmic vacuoles with eosino-philic inclusions. The presence, frequency and significance of these novel findings should be checked in large series of this rare and aggressive tumor aiming to associate with clinical behavior and eventually influence the strategy of treatment.

Plant-pollinator interactions are influenced, among other factors, by evolutionary history of the organisms. Thus, closely related species are expected to interact with similar pollinator assemblages. The aim of this study was to examine the evolution of pollination niches in neotropical epiphytic cacti. We recorded floral visitors and determined the pollination niche of 11 species of Rhipsalis and one species of Hatiora by using bipartite modularity, a metric of complex networks that is effective to identify pollination niches. Afterwards we explored how these niches evolved along the phylogeny of Rhipsalis. We recorded a total of 56 insect species belonging to nine functional groups pollinating those species of Rhipsalis. The most frequent floral visitors were bees. Pollination systems in Rhipsalis broadly combined a high phenotypic floral generalization with moderate richness of pollinator species and some functional pollinator group specialization. Four pollination niches were identified, mainly characterized by variations in the frequency of the functional groups of pollinators. The closer the species of Rhipsalis were, the more they interacted with the same functional groups of pollinators, as indicated by a positive phylogenetic signal for pollinating niches. The most likely ancestral pollination niche was associated with short-tongued bees. From the niche defined by small bees at least three shifts occurred towards the niches defined by extra-small bees, short-tongued medium bees, and flies. Considering the perspective of the evolution of each pollinator group, short-tongued bees were conserved along the branches of Rhipsalis phylogeny, with niche broadening or shifts associated with other groups such as flies, large bees, wasps, beetles and butterflies. Distinct generalist pollination niches have evolved in the genus. Shifts in pollination niches were related to differences in floral morphology. Moreover, the distribution of pollination niches only partially corresponded to the infrageneric classification of Rhipsalis. Our results support that generalist pollination systems encompass different pollinating niches, which may be consistently distributed across clades in angiosperm lineages.

Introdução e objetivos: Pouco sabemos acerca da biologia da polinização de espécies arbóreas tropicais com sistema de polinização por diversos insetos (DI). Estudamos a biologia floral, o sistema reprodutivo e os visitantes florais de Cupania oblongifolia. M&M: Experimentos e observações foram feitos em uma área de Mata Atlântica. Resultados: As flores são pequenas e esverdeadas e secretam pouco néctar. A espécie é díclina-monóica, mas a antese das flores femininas e masculinas é separada temporalmente nas inflorescências, com pouca ou sem sobreposição (i.e., dicogamia sincronizada). A produção de frutos não diferiu após polinização cruzada, autopolinização e condições naturais, indicando não haver autoincompatibilidade nem limitação polínica. A espécie foi visitada por 87 espécies de Hymenoptera, Diptera, Lepidoptera e Coleoptera. Flores masculinas foram mais visitadas e 20 espécies visitaram os dois morfos florais. A maioria dos visitantes florais foi rara e cerca de 80% das visitas foram de Hymenoptera, em particular abelhas sem ferrão. Duas espécies de Scaptotrigona foram eudominantes. Conclusões: O fenótipo floral se encaixa na descrição do sistema DI. Muitos insetos foram registrados, mas abelhas sem ferrão predominaram. Meliponini constitui o grupo antófilo mais abundante nas florestas neotropicais, portanto, sistemas de polinização associados a elas são esperados. A partir de nossos resultados se pode projetar que parte das espécies classificadas como DI com base no fenótipo floral e riqueza de visitantes podem estar fortemente associadas a um grupo específico de polinizadores, o que denotaria um menor grau de generalização.

BACKGROUND:Animal pollination is an important ecosystem function and service, ensuring both the integrity of natural systems and human well-being. Although many knowledge shortfalls remain, some high-quality data sets on biological interactions are now available. The development and adoption of standards for biodiversity data and metadata has promoted great advances in biological data sharing and aggregation, supporting large-scale studies and science-based public policies. However, these standards are currently not suitable to fully support interaction data sharing. RESULTS:Here we present a vocabulary of terms and a data model for sharing plant-pollinator interactions data based on the Darwin Core standard. The vocabulary introduces 48 new terms targeting several aspects of plant-pollinator interactions and can be used to capture information from different approaches and scales. Additionally, we provide solutions for data serialization using RDF, XML, and DwC-Archives and recommendations of existing controlled vocabularies for some of the terms. Our contribution supports open access to standardized data on plant-pollinator interactions. CONCLUSIONS:The adoption of the vocabulary would facilitate data sharing to support studies ranging from the spatial and temporal distribution of interactions to the taxonomic, phenological, functional, and phylogenetic aspects of plant-pollinator interactions. We expect to fill data and knowledge gaps, thus further enabling scientific research on the ecology and evolution of plant-pollinator communities, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and the development of public policies. The proposed data model is flexible and can be adapted for sharing other types of interactions data by developing discipline-specific vocabularies of terms.