ABSTRACT
New Guinea is the world's largest tropical island and has fascinated naturalists for centuries1,2. Home to some of the best-preserved ecosystems on the planet3 and to intact ecological gradients-from mangroves to tropical alpine grasslands-that are unmatched in the Asia-Pacific region4,5, it is a globally recognized centre of biological and cultural diversity6,7. So far, however, there has been no attempt to critically catalogue the entire vascular plant diversity of New Guinea. Here we present the first, to our knowledge, expert-verified checklist of the vascular plants of mainland New Guinea and surrounding islands. Our publicly available checklist includes 13,634 species (68% endemic), 1,742 genera and 264 families-suggesting that New Guinea is the most floristically diverse island in the world. Expert knowledge is essential for building checklists in the digital era: reliance on online taxonomic resources alone would have inflated species counts by 22%. Species discovery shows no sign of levelling off, and we discuss steps to accelerate botanical research in the 'Last Unknown'8.
Subject(s)
Biodiversity , Classification/methods , Islands , Plants/classification , Geographic Mapping , History, 18th Century , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Internet , New Guinea , Species Specificity , Time FactorsABSTRACT
Based on ongoing ecological research in mountain forests of Sulawesi, a new species, Elaeocarpus firdausii Brambach, Coode, Biagioni & Culmsee, sp. nov. is described and illustrated from mossy forests at > 2000 m and information provided on the species' distribution, ecology and pollen morphology. Elaeocarpus firdausii is similar to Elaeocarpus luteolignum Coode but differs from the latter in having glabrous terminal buds, leaves with black gland dots, 4-merous, larger flowers, and more numerous stamens.
