Special Issue of Systematic Botany: The Brazilian Flora in Focus
The Neotropical region is recognized as the most species-rich area in the world and encompasses six of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots. Brazil is a megadiverse country in South America; an overview of the Brazilian Flora (BF 2020) provided a high-quality taxonomic and spatial update for 92% of all known Brazilian land plants, 6% of known algal species, and 5.5% of known fungi. This huge collaborative project (including 980 taxonomists) found 46.975 native species (excluding naturalized and cultivated species), of which 43% are endemic. The project also highlighted that data derived from preserved specimens and collections in the field are more and more desired and considered crucial to the quality of science based on those records.
Despite these tremendous recent advances, there is still much to be learned and documented and we are inviting researchers to contribute to a special issue of Systematic Botany to provide new information and complements to Brazilian Flora 2020. Papers should be focused on plants, involving the description of new taxa in a broader context of the groups involved, taxonomic reviews, biological collections (big data) and their potential in fostering the conservation of biodiversity or developing solutions for climate change, and/or including the role of morphology (micro- and macro-) in systematics, morphometric analyses, molecular phylogenetics, biogeography, diversity and conservation of particular taxonomic groups (orders, families or genera) or of a particular domain (Amazonia, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, Caatinga, Pantanal or Pampa).
This issue will be published in mid-2025, handled by guest editors Nádia Roque, Leonardo M. Versieux, and Ricardo Pacífico, and coordinated by Editor-in-Chief Daniel Potter. We encourage researchers to submit papers with a broad concept of the topic covered and results that will lead to new questions to be uncovered in the future. The deadline for submission of papers ranges from July to November 2024. Please follow the general author guidelines, as all papers will be evaluated using the normal Systematic Botany peer review process. However, if you would like a manuscript to be considered for publication in this special issue, please include a statement to that effect in the cover letter accompanying the submission.