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Selecting the best candidates for resurrecting extinct-in-the-wild plants from herbaria

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 1385–1393 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Resurrecting extinct species is a fascinating and challenging idea for scientists and the general public. Whereas some theoretical progress has been made for animals, the resurrection of extinct plants (de-extinction sensu lato) is a relatively recently discussed topic. In this context, the term ‘de-extinction’ is used sensu lato to refer to the resurrection of ‘extinct in the wild’ species from seeds or tissues preserved in herbaria, as we acknowledge the current impossibility of knowing a priori whether a herbarium seed is alive and can germinate. In plants, this could be achieved by germinating or in vitro tissue-culturing old diaspores such as seeds or spores available in herbarium specimens. This paper reports the first list of plant de-extinction candidates based on the actual availability of seeds in herbarium specimens of globally extinct plants. We reviewed globally extinct seed plants using online resources and additional literature on national red lists, resulting in a list of 361 extinct taxa. We then proposed a method of prioritizing candidates for seed-plant de-extinction from diaspores found in herbarium specimens and complemented this with a phylogenetic approach to identify species that may maximize evolutionarily distinct features. Finally, combining data on seed storage behaviour and longevity, as well as specimen age in the novel ‘best de-extinction candidate’ score (DEXSCO), we identified 556 herbarium specimens belonging to 161 extinct species with available seeds. We expect that this list of de-extinction candidates and the novel approach to rank them will boost research efforts towards the first-ever plant de-extinction.

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Data availability

All data in Materials and Methods are included in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request, as some original data were provided under a confidentiality clause.

The following databases were consulted for the revision of extinct plant species:

BGCI | Botanic Gardens Conservation International (https://www.bgci.org/)

ENSCOBASE (http://enscobase.maich.gr/)

IUCN, The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. V. 2021-3 (2022) (https://www.iucnredlist.org/)

Millennium Seed Bank—Seed List (http://apps.kew.org/seedlist/SeedlistServlet)

Threatened Species Programme | SANBI Red List of South African Plants (http://redlist.sanbi.org/index.php)

A Database of the World’s Recently Extinct Species: Plants, Animals and Fungi – The Recently Extinct Plants and Animals Database (https://recentlyextinctspecies.com/)

Virtual herbaria specimens were researched using:

Biodiversity Center of Japan (https://www.biodic.go.jp/index_e.html)

Calflora - Information on wild California plants (https://www.calflora.org/)

Chinese Virtual Herbarium - 中国数字植物标本馆 (CVH) - 国家植物标本资源库在线共享平台 (https://www.cvh.ac.cn/index.php)

GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/)

JACQ - Virtual Herbaria (https://www.jacq.org/#database)

e-ReColNat Infrastructure (https://www.recolnat.org/en/)

RM Herbarium Specimen Search (http://rmh.uwyo.edu/data/browse_scientific.php)

AVH - The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (https://avh.chah.org.au/)

Tropicos - Home (https://www.tropicos.org/home)

Change history

  • 27 January 2023

    In the version of this article initially published, the surname of Christian Bräuchler was misspelled as “Bräeuchler,” and has now been amended in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the following herbarium personnel for assistance in examining specimens, including verifying the presence of seeds/fruits: S. Asencio (DAO), R. De Guzman (CAS), P. W. Fritsch (BRIT), C. Gallagher (MEL), A. D. S. Braganca Gil (MG), B. Lepschi (CANB), C. Loup (MPU), L. Loze (G), E. B. Magnaghi (CAS), A. Mcardle (MEL), P. Milne (former manager of collections at MEL), C. A. Morse (KANU), R. K. Rabeler (MICH), D. Ranatunga (AK), D. Schiavinato (BAA), M. A. Spencer (LINN), L. A. Standley (NEBC) and F. Zich (CNS).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science, University of Roma Tre, Rome, Italy

    Giulia Albani Rocchetti, Giulia Caneva & Thomas Abeli

  2. Department of Biology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Angelino Carta

  3. Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Andrea Mondoni

  4. Research Department, Meise Botanic Garden, Meise, Belgium

    Sandrine Godefroid

  5. Service général de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche scientifique, Fédération Wallonie, Brussels, Belgium

    Sandrine Godefroid

  6. Laboratory of Plant Ecology and Biogeochemistry, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Sandrine Godefroid

  7. Department of Organismic Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Charles C. Davis

  8. Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Charles C. Davis

  9. Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development, Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, MO, USA

    Matthew A. Albrecht

  10. Department of Cell Biology, Microbiology and Molecular Biology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Karla Alvarado

  11. Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Botany Section, Leiden, the Netherlands

    Roxali Bijmoer & Jan J. Wieringa

  12. Royal Botanic Gardens, Richmond, Surrey, UK

    Renata Borosova & Marie Briggs

  13. Department of Botany, Natural History Museum Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Christian Bräuchler

  14. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Wakehurst; Ardingly, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, UK

    Elinor Breman

  15. Conservatoire botanique national de Brest, Brest, France

    Stephane Buord

  16. Tasmanian Herbarium, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Lynette H. Cave

  17. Departamento de Botânica, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Nílber Gonçalves Da Silva

  18. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Alexandra H. Davey

  19. Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Seed and Lab-Based Collections, Sussex, UK

    Rachael M. Davies & John B. Dickie

  20. Queensland Herbarium, Department of Environment and Science, Brisbane Botanic Gardens Mt Coot-tha, Toowong, Queensland, Australia

    Melodina Fabillo & Andrew Franks

  21. Botanische Staatssammlung München (SNSB-BSM), and GeoBio-Center LMU, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

    Andreas Fleischmann

  22. Centre sur la biodiversité de l’Université de Montréal (CITES CA-035), Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Geoffrey Hall

  23. Tasmanian Herbarium, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, Australia

    Gintaras Kantvilas

  24. Bolus Herbarium, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa

    Cornelia Klak

  25. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Wellcome Trust Millennium Building, West Sussex, England, UK

    Udayangani Liu

  26. Real Jardín Botánico-CSIC, Madrid, Spain

    Leopoldo Medina

  27. The Bergius Botanic Garden, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Lars Gunnar Reinhammar

  28. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria, South Africa

    Ramagwai J. Sebola

  29. School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand; WITS, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Ramagwai J. Sebola

  30. Allan Herbarium, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand

    Ines Schönberger

  31. Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Patrick Sweeney

  32. Department for Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Hermann Voglmayr

  33. CSIRO Black Mountain Laboratories, Black Mountain, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Adam White

  34. Dahlem Seed Bank, Botanical Garden and Botanic Museum Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Elke Zippel

  35. IUCN SSC Conservation Translocation Specialist Group, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    Thomas Abeli

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  1. Giulia Albani Rocchetti
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  2. Angelino Carta
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  4. Sandrine Godefroid
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  6. Giulia Caneva
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  11. Christian Bräuchler
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  13. Marie Briggs
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  36. Thomas Abeli
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G.A.R., T.A. and A.C. conceptualized the project. G.A.R., T.A. and A.C. developed the methodology. G.A.R. and T.A. conducted the investigations. G.A.R. performed visualization. T.A. administered the project. T.A., G.C. and C.C.D. supervised the project. G.A.R. and T.A. wrote the original draft. A.C., A.M., S.G., C.C.D., G.C., M.A.A., K.A., R. Bijmoer, R. Borosova, C.B., E.B., M.B., S.B., L.H.C., N.G.D.S., A.H.D., R.M.D., J.B.D., M.F., A. Fleischmann, A. Franks, G.H., G.K., C.K., U.L., L.M., L.G.R., R.J.S., I.S., P.S., H.V., A.W., J.J.W. and E.Z. reviewed and edited the manuscript. G.A.R., T.A., A.C., A.M., S.G., C.C.D., M.A.A., K.A., R. Bijmoer, R. Borosova, C.B., E.B., M.B., S.B., L.H.C., N.G.D.S., A.H.D., R.M.D., J.B.D., M.F., A. Fleischmann, A. Franks, G.H., G.K., C.K., U.L., L.M., L.G.R., R.J.S., I.S., P.S., H.V., A.W., J.J.W. and E.Z. contributed data.

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Correspondence to Giulia Albani Rocchetti.

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Nature Plants thanks Philip Seddon, Stuart Pimm and Matthew Slater for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Reporting Summary

Supplementary Tables 1–6

Table 1. Table of Materials and Methods references. Table 2. List of globally extinct taxa. Table 3. List of ED index per genus. Table 4. List of extinct species without digitized specimens. Table 5. List of herbarium specimens with seeds or fruits. Table 6. List of candidate species.

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Albani Rocchetti, G., Carta, A., Mondoni, A. et al. Selecting the best candidates for resurrecting extinct-in-the-wild plants from herbaria. Nat. Plants 8, 1385–1393 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01296-7

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