世界上已知维管植物有多少种?基于多个全球植物数据库的整合

How many known vascular plant species are there in the world?An integration of multiple global plant databases

维管植物是地球上生物多样性的重要组成部分,拥有超过200年的研究历史。然而,世界上有多少种维管植物,其中有多少种已被发现和描述等问题迄今仍未很好回答。本文整合分析了全球4个主要植物数据库,以期回答全球已发现和描述了多少物种的问题。结果表明,全球已发现和描述的维管植物有376,366种(包括自然杂交种)。排除自然杂交种后,全球共包含369,054种维管植物,其中广义蕨类植物13,810种,裸子植物1,172种,被子植物354,072种。我们的结果比已有的4个数据库中的任何一个的物种数都至少要多17,700种。

Aims:Despite that vascular plants constitute an important component of overall global biodiversity and have been studied well over two centuries,the questions of“How many species of vascular plants are there in the world and how many of them have been discovered and described?”remain open.Here,we address the second of the two questions.Method:We synthesized four global plant databases.Results&Conclusions:Our study shows that for the entire global flora of vascular plants(including natural hybrids),376,366 species have been discovered and validly described.When natural hybrids are excluded,the global flora includes 369,054 species of vascular plant species,of which pteridophytes(ferns and lycophytes),gymnosperms and angiosperms have 13,810,1,172 and 354,072 species,respectively.The number of vascular plant species derived from our study is larger than any of the other four databases by at least 17,700 species.