Beyond the Frontier: Seeing the Forest for the Liverworts
In this episode of Beyond the Frontier, we talk with Dr. Ricardo Rozzi about his recent Frontiers paper, “Changing lenses to assess biodiversity: patterns of species richness in sub-Antarctic plants and implications for global conservation”. Dr. Rozzi and his coauthors show that non-vascular plants increase in diversity toward the poles – in marked contrast to vascular plants, which decrease in diversity toward the poles. He argues that we’ve overlooked this important pattern because biodiversity research is too often focused on large, charismatic species, like vertebrates and flowering plants. A new reserve in southern Chile aims to promote public awareness of a non-vascular plant biodiversity hotspot, to introduce tourists to these “miniature forests”, and to change the lens through which we view global biodiversity.
