The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Multidimensional biases, gaps and uncertainties in global plant occurrence information
Abstract
Plants are a hyperdiverse clade that plays a key role in maintaining ecological and evolutionary processes as well as human livelihoods. Biases, gaps and uncertainties in plant occurrence information remain a central problem in ecology and conservation, but these limitations remain largely unassessed globally. In this synthesis, we propose a conceptual framework for analysing gaps in information coverage, information uncertainties and biases in these metrics along taxonomic, geographical and temporal dimensions, and apply it to all c. 370 000 species of land plants. To this end, we integrated 120 million point‐occurrence records with independent databases on plant taxonomy, distributions and conservation status. We find that different data limitations are prevalent in each dimension. Different metrics of information coverage and uncertainty are largely uncorrelated, and reducing taxonomic, spatial or temporal uncertainty by filtering out records would usually come at great costs to coverage. In light of these multidimensional data limitations, we discuss prospects for global plant ecological and biogeographical research, monitoring and conservation and outline critical next steps towards more effective information usage and mobilisation. Our study provides an empirical baseline for evaluating and improving global floristic knowledge, along with a conceptual framework that can be applied to study other hyperdiverse clades.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change
Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S. A., Tyukavina, A., Thau, D., Stehman, S. V., Goetz, S. J., Loveland, T. R., et al. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1244693 · Cited by 11,704
High plant diversity is needed to maintain ecosystem services
Isbell, F., Calcagno, V., Hector, A., Connolly, J., Harpole, W. S., Reich, P. B., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Schmid, B., Tilman, D., van Ruijven, J., et al. (2011) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature10282 · Cited by 1,664
Higher levels of multiple ecosystem services are found in forests with more tree species
Gamfeldt, L., Snäll, T., Bagchi, R., Jonsson, M., Gustafsson, L., Kjellander, P., Ruiz-Jaen, M. C., Fröberg, M., Stendahl, J., Philipson, C. D., et al. (2013) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms2328 · Cited by 1,477
A mid-term analysis of progress toward international biodiversity targets
Tittensor, D. P., Walpole, M., Hill, S. L. L., Boyce, D. G., Britten, G. L., Burgess, N. D., Butchart, S. H. M., Leadley, P. W., Regan, E. C., Alkemade, R., et al. (2014) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1257484 · Cited by 1,227
Global exchange and accumulation of non-native plants
van Kleunen, M., Dawson, W., Essl, F., Pergl, J., Winter, M., Weber, E., Kreft, H., Weigelt, P., Kartesz, J., Nishino, M., et al. (2015) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature14910 · Cited by 1,095
Self-citationDistorted Views of Biodiversity: Spatial and Temporal Bias in Species Occurrence Data
Boakes, E. H., McGowan, P. J. K., Fuller, R. A., Chang-qing, D., Clark, N. E., O'Connor, K., & Mace, G. M. (2010) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000385 · Cited by 824
How Global Is the Global Biodiversity Information Facility?
Yesson, C., Brewer, P. W., Sutton, T., Caithness, N., Pahwa, J. S., Burgess, M., Gray, W. A., White, R. J., Jones, A. C., Bisby, F. A., et al. (2007) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001124 · Cited by 369
The tropical biodiversity data gap: addressing disparity in global monitoring
Collen, B., Ram, M., Zamin, T., & McRae, L. (2008) · Tropical Conservation Science · doi:10.1177/194008290800100202 · Cited by 327
Cited by
Global hotspots and correlates of alien species richness across taxonomic groups
Dawson, W., Moser, D., van Kleunen, M., Kreft, H., Pergl, J., Pyšek, P., Weigelt, P., Winter, M., Lenzner, B., Blackburn, T. M., et al. (2017) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0186 · Cited by 481
Self-citationData integration enables global biodiversity synthesis
Heberling, J. M., Miller, J. T., Noesgaard, D., Weingart, S. B., & Schigel, D. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2018093118 · Cited by 380
Situating Ecology as a Big-Data Science: Current Advances, Challenges, and Solutions
Farley, S. S., Dawson, A., Goring, S. J., & Williams, J. W. (2018) · BioScience · doi:10.1093/biosci/biy068 · Cited by 331
A checklist for maximizing reproducibility of ecological niche models
Feng, X., Park, D. S., Walker, C., Peterson, A. T., Merow, C., & Papeş, M. (2019) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-019-0972-5 · Cited by 323
Digitization and the Future of Natural History Collections
Hedrick, B. P., Heberling, J. M., Meineke, E. K., Turner, K. G., Grassa, C. J., Park, D. S., Kennedy, J., Clarke, J. A., Cook, J. A., Blackburn, D. C., et al. (2020) · BioScience · doi:10.1093/biosci/biz163 · Cited by 306
Metadata
- Authors
- Meyer, C., Weigelt, P., & Kreft, H.
- Venue
- Ecology Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-06-02
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 992-1006
- ISSN
- 1461-023X (ISSN-L)
- 1461-0248
- OpenAlex
- W1144607668
- Cited by
- 572
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 41.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Multidimensional biases, gaps and uncertainties in global plant occurrence information. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/ele.12624
- The paper
- Meyer, C., Weigelt, P., & Kreft, H. (2016). Multidimensional biases, gaps and uncertainties in global plant occurrence information. Ecology Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12624
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
