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Abstract PremisePteridophytes—vascular land plants that disperse by spores—are a powerful system for studying plant evolution, particularly with respect to the impact of abiotic factors on evolutionary trajectories through deep time. However, our ability to use pteridophytes to investigate such questions—or to capitalize on the ecological and conservation‐related applications of the group—has been impaired by the relative isolation of the neo‐ and paleobotanical research communities and by the absence of large‐scale biodiversity data sources. MethodsHere we present the Pteridophyte Collections Consortium (PCC), an interdisciplinary community uniting neo‐ and paleobotanists, and the associated PteridoPortal, a publicly accessible online portal that serves over three million pteridophyte records, including herbarium specimens, paleontological museum specimens, and iNaturalist observations. We demonstrate the utility of the PteridoPortal through discussion of three example PteridoPortal‐enabled research projects. ResultsThe data within the PteridoPortal are global in scope and are queryable in a flexible manner. The PteridoPortal contains a taxonomic thesaurus (a digital version of a Linnaean classification) that includes both extant and extinct pteridophytes in a common phylogenetic framework. The PteridoPortal allows applications such as greatly accelerated classic floristics, entirely new “next‐generation” floristic approaches, and the study of environmentally mediated evolution of functional morphology across deep time. DiscussionThe PCC and PteridoPortal provide a comprehensive resource enabling novel research into plant evolution, ecology, and conservation across deep time, facilitating rapid floristic analyses and other biodiversity‐related investigations, and providing new opportunities for education and community engagement. 

We provide new combinations for species in Enterosora Baker (1887: 294) in alignment with a proposal of the pteridophyte community classification (PPG, 2016). 

We compiled a list of the fern and lycophyte species that occur in Mesoamerica and extend into Colombia and Ecuador, where they are restricted to the western side of the Andes; that is, they occur only west of the crest of the easternmost cordillera and are absent from that cordillera’s eastern slope and in adjacent Amazonia. We found 131 species with this Mesoamerican and west-of-the-eastern-cordillera distribution. Those 131 species constitute 7% of the total 1805 fern and lycophyte species that have been recorded west of the crest of the easternmost cordillera in Colombia and Ecuador. All 131 species have elevation ranges with midpoints at low (0–900 m) or middle (900–3000 m) elevations, and none occur above 3000 m. This suggests the cordilleras have acted as elevational barriers. We also investigated the blockage of these 131 species by each of the Andean cordilleras. We found that 75 (57%) of the 131 species were limited eastward by the western cordillera, 15 (11%) by the central cordillera (this cordillera in Colombia only), and 40 (31%) by the eastern cordillera. If estimates of endemics to the western Andean region are considered, then at least 20%–22% of all fern and lycophyte species in the region are restricted west of the crest of the easternmost cordillera. Although usually exhibiting larger geographic distributions compared to angiosperms, fern and lycophyte species may show significant geographic restriction by mountain ranges.