OCCURRENCE DATA WORKING GROUP

Coordinators: Edeline Gagnon (University of Guelph, Canada), Joe Miller (Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Denmark), and Jens Ringelberg (Wageningen University, the Netherlands)

The Occurrence Data Working Group aims to promote the use of legume occurrence data in scientific studies. On our webpage, we provide information and resources about the assembly and cleaning of occurrence data, as well as an up-to-date list of published studies with publicly available quality controlled legume occurrence datasets. We hope that this encourages other researchers to re-use these datasets, to avoid unnecessary repetition of work and promote collaboration. If your published dataset is not yet listed, please reach out to us.

Every year we provide an overview of recent legume studies that assembled or made use of detailed occurrence data. The past year has been an exciting year for legume biogeography studies, with a strong focus on the Neotropics, but several inspiring studies on legumes in other parts of the world as well.

Our overview starts in southern South America: Matías Morales (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Argentina) and colleagues assembled a comprehensive occurrence dataset of legumes in the Gran Chaco ecoregion of Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina. They used this dataset to assess areas of endemism and to perform a bioregionalization analysis in this important, diverse, and understudied region, thereby highlighting the urgency of conserving the unfortunately highly deforested Gran Chaco. Towards the (north)east, two exciting studies shed light on the biogeography of Mimosa (Caesalpinioideae): Fernanda Schmidt Silveira and Silvia Teresinha Sfoggia Miotto (both from Universidade Federal Do Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil) clarified the distribution of five rare species in the Southern Brazilian grasslands, whereas Lucas Sá Barreto Jordão (Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and colleagues studied the distributions of the species of the Petiolavariabilis clade in the Brazilian highlands. Further to the north, in Central America and Mexico, Juan David Sánchez-Rodríguez (Instituto de Ecología, Mexico) and coworkers analysed the ecological niches of the so-called ant Acacias (actually Vachellia (Caesalpinioideae)) and their ant mutualists, highlighting how the partners in this symbiosis influence each other’s geographical and ecological distributions. Finally, Laís Couto Zeferino (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil) and colleagues provided a taxonomic synopsis of the circa 80 Neotropical species of the pantropical genus Zornia (Papilionoideae), including detailed distribution maps of all species.

Moving from the New to the Old World, Aakash Maurya (National Botanical Research Institute, India) and coworkers carefully mapped the distribution of the enigmatic, monotypic genus Indopiptadenia (Caesalpinioideae). Its sole species only occurs in the foothills of the Himalayas along the border between India and Nepal, and Maurya et al. show that it should be a high conservation priority. In a cross-continental study, Zhao-Yu Yan (Southwest Forestry University, China) and colleagues compared distributions within the Caesalpinioid genus Gleditsia, which has an intriguing disjunct distribution between eastern Asia and eastern North America, where its species occupy similar but subtly different ecological niches. Finally, in an impressive global study, Sazada Siddiqui (King Abdullah University, Saudi Arabia) assessed distribution patterns of all legumes, highlighting the importance of various climatic and geographic factors in shaping the distribution of species richness. Unfortunately this study is not based on point occurrence data but on distributions aggregated at the level of botanical countries, but work is undergoing to assemble a finer-scale occurrence dataset of all legumes (see final part of this report).

Please note that several of the contributions listed above were published in Advances in Legume Systematics 15, which was edited by Leonardo Borges (Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brazil) and colleagues. This special issue contains multiple other exciting legume distribution studies that were already published towards the end of 2024, and were therefore discussed in the previous issue of the Bean Bag.

Finally, the Legume Occurrence Working Group (still) needs your help! A project led by Jens Ringelberg, but with major input from Moabe Fernandes and many other legume researchers, is aiming to assemble a quality controlled occurrence dataset of the entire legume family. A crucial part of this project consists of the careful checking of maps of species and genera by experts of particular groups. Several dozens of legume experts have already contributed to this, but there still are many genera that remain unchecked. Anyone who would like to help is very welcome to, regardless of their career stage (students are more than welcome to participate), and all contributors are invited to be a co-author on the resulting publication(s). If you are interested in helping, or would like to learn more about the project, please just send an email to Jens (jens.ringelberg@gmail.com). Thank you!

References

Jordão LSB, Morim MP, Simon MF, Baumgratz JFA (2025) Advances in systematics of Mimosa (Fabaceae): phylogeny and biogeography of the Petiolavariabilis clade. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 209: 51-67. https://doi.org/10.1093/botlinnean/boae090

Maurya A, Mishra BP, Prabhukumar KM, Rana TS (2025) Threat status assessment and habitat distribution mapping of the monotypic genus Indopiptadenia Brenan (Fabaceae: Caesalpinioideae). Brazilian Journal of Botany 48: 27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40415-024-01050-7

Morales M, Sartori ALB, Prado DE, Fortunato RH (2025) Identifying areas and centers of endemism in the Gran Chaco with Fabaceae as a diversity indicator. Scientific Reports 15: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-90091-3

Sánchez-Rodríguez JD, Esparza-Estrada CE, de los Monteros AE, Osorio-Olvera L, Rojas-Soto O (2025) Do ecological interactions promote the coevolution of ecological niches in the acacias (Fabaceae: Vachellia spp.) and their mutualistic ants (Formicidae: Pseudomyrmex ferrugineus group)? Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 145: blaf030. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blaf030

Siddiqui S (2025) Global patterns and drivers of species and genera richness of Fabaceae. Frontiers in Plant Science 16: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2025.1581814

Silveira FS, Miotto STS (2025) Sellow, where did these sensitive plants come from? New records shed light on poorly known Mimosa species from Southern Brazilian grasslands. Brazilian Journal of Botany 48: 54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40415-025-01091-6

Yan Z-Y, Wu H-Y, Tian B, Ye J-W (2025) Comparison of shifts of potential distributions in Gleditsia (Fabaceae) between eastern Asia and eastern North America. Ecology and Evolution 15: e72591. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.72591

Zeferino LC, Lewis GP, Pezzini FF, Fortuna-perez AP (2025) A taxonomic synopsis of the genus Zornia J.F. Gmel. (Leguminosae: Papilionoideae) for the Neotropics. Acta Botanica Brasilica 39: e20240197. https://doi.org/10.1590/1677-941X-ABB-2024-0197