A recent collaboration between the Garden’s Horticulture division and the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development will help botanical gardens around the world determine where to source plants for ex situ conservation in their collections.
Botanic gardens play a central role in ex situ conservation and are well positioned to host increasing numbers of species of conservation concern (Westwood et al., 2020). Collectively, botanic gardens manage at least 105,634 species, including 41% of the species classified as threatened (Mounce et al., 2017).
Ex situ species conservation: Predicting plant survival in botanic gardens based on climatic provenance | Biological Conservation (Volume 265, January 2022, 109410)
The novel research uses climate data and the Garden’s own plant records to measure the extent to which the St. Louis climate is appropriate for growing plant species from around the world. Learn more in this Botany One blog post.
“The results of this work will help guide future target regions and associated species for living collections.”
Rebecca Sucher, Senior Manager of Living Collections and part of the research team behind the project.