Strategies of diaspore dispersal investment in Compositae: the case of the Andean highlands.

Background And Aims: Understanding diaspore morphology and how much a species invests on dispersal appendages is key for improving our knowledge of dispersal in fragmented habitats. We investigate diaspore morphological traits in high-Andean Compositae and their main abiotic and biotic drivers and test whether they play a role in species distribution patterns across the naturally fragmented high-Andean grasslands.

Methods: We collected diaspore trait data for 125 Compositae species across 47 tropical high-Andean summits, focusing on achene length and pappus-to-achene length ratio, with the latter as a proxy of dispersal investment.

Humboldt's revisited.

Alexander von Humboldt's (1807) has been one of the most influential diagrams in the history of environmental sciences. In particular, detailed observations of the altitudinal distribution of plant species in the equatorial Andes, depicted on a cross-section of Mt. Chimborazo, allowed Humboldt to establish the concept of vegetation belt, thereby laying the foundations of biogeography.

Availability, diversification and versatility explain human selection of introduced plants in Ecuadorian traditional medicine.

Globally, a majority of people use plants as a primary source of healthcare and introduced plants are increasingly discussed as medicine. Protecting this resource for human health depends upon understanding which plants are used and how use patterns will change over time. The increasing use of introduced plants in local pharmacopoeia has been explained by their greater abundance or accessibility (availability hypothesis), their ability to cure medical conditions that are not treated by native plants (diversification hypothesis), or as a result of the introduced plants' having many different simultaneous roles (versatility hypothesis).