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Summary Botanical gardens make unique contributions to climate change research, conservation, and public engagement. They host unique resources, including diverse collections of plant species growing in natural conditions, historical records, and expert staff, and attract large numbers of visitors and volunteers. Networks of botanical gardens spanning biomes and continents can expand the value of these resources. Over the past decade, research at botanical gardens has advanced our understanding of climate change impacts on plant phenology, physiology, anatomy, and conservation. For example, researchers have utilized botanical garden networks to assess anatomical and functional traits associated with phenological responses to climate change. New methods have enhanced the pace and impact of this research, including phylogenetic and comparative methods, and online databases of herbarium specimens and photographs that allow studies to expand geographically, temporally, and taxonomically in scope. Botanical gardens have grown their community and citizen science programs, informing the public about climate change and monitoring plants more intensively than is possible with garden staff alone. Despite these advances, botanical gardens are still underutilized in climate change research. To address this, we review recent progress and describe promising future directions for research and public engagement at botanical gardens.
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Living collections: Biodiversity cultivated at public gardens has the power to connect ecological questions and evolutionary context
Combining ecological questions with evolutionary con- text generates novel insight into both ecology and evo- lution. 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 botan- ical 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 sys- tematics, 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).
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- Award ID(s):
- 2217714
- PAR ID:
- 10546476
- Editor(s):
- Diggle, P
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Journal of Botany
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Journal of Botany
- Volume:
- 111
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 0002-9122
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e16394
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16394
