Spatial patterns of phylogenetic and species diversity of Fennoscandian vascular plants in protected areas ...

• Main Authors: Matten, Damaris M., Mienna, Ida M., Bieker, Vanessa C., Mishler, Brent D., Moen, Victoria S., Nygaard, Malene, Vuorinen, Katariina E. M., Bendiksby, Mika, Martin, Michael D., Speed, James D. M.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2022
• Subjects: FOS Natural sciences; Biodiversity; spatial phylogenetics; conservation; species-area relationship; phylogenetic diversity-area relationship; flora; Norway; Fennoscandia; Fennoscandian
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n8pk0p303; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.n8pk0p303

Protected areas are one of the main strategic means for conserving biodiversity. Yet, the design of protected areas usually neglects phylogenetic diversity, an important diversity measure. In this paper, we assess the phylogenetic diversity and species richness of vascular plants in Fennoscandian protected areas. We evaluate how much species richness and phylogenetic diversity is found within and outside protected areas, and the differences in diversity between different categories of protected areas. We also assess the differences in the diversity-area relationship of the different protected area categories in terms of both species richness and phylogenetic diversity. We build a multi-locus phylogeny of 1,519 native vascular plants of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. We estimate the phylogenetic diversity and species richness by combining the phylogeny with publicly available occurrence data and the currently protected area system of Fennoscandia. Our results indicate that protected areas in Fennoscandia hold ... : Generation of sequence data: We generated 264 new nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences from specimens deposited in the herbaria O (Natural History Museum, Oslo) and TRH (NTNU University Museum, Trondheim). DNA extraction, amplification of the ITS region, and Sanger sequencing of the resulting PCR product followed the procedures described by Mienna et al. (2020), with two notable exceptions. Firstly, for all specimens collected before the year 2000, DNA was extracted and prepared for PCR amplification in the NTNU University Museum’s dedicated, UV-sterilised, positively pressurised paleogenomics laboratory facility. Secondly, herbarium specimens yielding degraded DNA extracts, from which we could not amplify the entire ITS region using the primer pair ITS5a/ITS4 (Stanford et al., 2000; White et al., 1990), were subjected to additional attempts amplifying the region in two shorter fragments, targeting ITS1 and ITS2, respectively, using the primer pairs ITS-p2/ITS-p5 and ITS-p3/ITS-p4 ...