Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-19-2024
Abstract
Combining ecological questions with evolutionary context generates novel insight into both ecology and evolution. However, our ability to draw broad inferences can be limited by the taxonomic diversity present within and across species at a site. Public gardens (including botanical gardens and arboreta) may focus solely on aesthetics in developing their gardens, but some public gardens include scientific inquiry and conservation at the core of their missions (Hohn, 2022). These scientifically oriented public gardens follow community standards of excellence (Hohn, 2022) to provide unique access to curated plant collections specifically designed to gather high levels of biodiversity, both among and within species, at a single geographic location. These research-grade collections include long-lived species cared for over many decades. Such public gardens have long histories of conducting and supporting research harnessing the power inherent in these diverse collections, including explorations of systematics, ecophysiology, and ecology. By bringing together species, as well as individuals within species, from across broad spatial ranges into a single site, these collections offer living repositories of diversity ripe for scientific exploration as de facto common gardens (Dosmann, 2006; Dosmann and Groover, 2012; Primack et al., 2021).
Keywords
botanical garden, common garden, microevolution, phylogeny
Language
English
Publication Title
American Journal of Botany
Grant
DEB 2217714
Rights
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/), which permits non-commercial copying and redistribution of the material in any medium or format, provided the original work is not changed in any way and is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Burns J. H., K. L.Stuble, and J. S. Medeiros. 2024. Living collections: Biodiversity cultivated at public gardens has the power to connect ecological questions and evolutionary context. American Journal of Botany 111(9): e16394. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16394
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version