Glenda Mendieta-Leiva

Philipps University of Marburg | PUM · Faculty of Biology

Vascular epiphytes are a diverse and conspicuous component of biodiversity in tropical and subtropical forests. Still, the patterns and drivers of epiphyte assemblages are poorly studied in comparison to soil‐rooted plants. Our current knowledge about diversity patterns of epiphytes mainly stems from local studies or floristic inventories, but this...

Understanding the degree to which deterministic and stochastic processes drive community assembly is an ongoing focus of research in community ecology. This effort is strongly biased towards ground‐rooted plants, resulting in a limited understanding of communities of other life‐forms, such as structurally dependent plants. Vascular epiphytes are se...

The Neotropical realm hosts some of the Earth’s most species-rich biodiversity hotspots, with vascular epiphytes significantly contributing to this diversity. However, many regions of the Neotropics where epiphytic species of restricted distribution are reported coincide with threatened ecosystems, such as the tropical montane cloud forest. Moreove...

Ecuador belongs to the megadiverse countries of the world. However, the high diversity in species, ecosystems and their services are under threat by land use changes, invasive species, overexploitation, pollution and climate change. There is a need to monitor, manage, protect and improve biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) in Ecuador; however...

Mesoamerican mountains are important centers of endemism and diversity of epiphytes. The Sierra Madre of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico is a mountainous region of great ecological interest due to its high biological richness. We present the first checklist of epiphytes for this region based on a compilation of various information sources. In additi...

Aim Endemic species, characterised by limited geographic ranges, face a high risk of extinction. The neotropical region harbours diverse ecosystems and a substantial number of endemic species, thus identifying areas of high endemism is crucial for protecting unique and threatened species and ecosystems. Vascular epiphytes—nonparasitic plants that g...

Networks have been widely used to describe a range of biotic interactions in ecosystems; topological indicators of ecological networks provide systematic way to characterize patterns of different interacting systems. However, it is hampered by sampling bias and detecting the true structures to compare the stability of ecological commu- nities. In t...

Land cover change threatens biodiversity by reducing species richness, altering species composition, and favouring generalist species. Pasture creation can promote the loss of original species, although this loss can be mitigated by maintaining scattered trees to reduce their structural differences with forests and thus retaining a portion of regio...

The Neotropical realm hosts some of the Earth's most species-rich biodiversity hotspots, with vascular epiphytes significantly contributing to this diversity, regionally accounting for up to 39% of the vascular flora. However, many regions of the Neotropics where epi-phytic species of restricted distribution are reported coincide with threatened ec...

Guedes et al.1 argue that eponymous scientific names, despite their long tradition in biology, have no place in the modern world. They want to erase eponyms assigned to species in the past and want scientists to stop naming new species after people. Both of these proposals would hurt science and disproportionately hurt science in the Global South —...

Understanding the mechanisms driving community assembly has been a major focus of ecological research for nearly a century, yet little is known about these mechanisms in commensal communities, particularly with respect to their historical/evolutionary components. Here, we use a large-scale dataset of 4,440 vascular plant species to explore the rela...

Mesoamerican mountains are important centers of endemism and diversity of vascular epiphytes. The Sierra Madre of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico is a mountainous region of great ecological interest due to its high biological richness. We present the first checklist of epiphytes for this region based on a compilation of various information sources.

Questions Bryophytes attain their highest diversity in tropical mountain forests. Although distribution patterns have been described, little emphasis has been placed on comparing patterns among substrates (e.g., terrestrial, epiphytic). Understanding these patterns is important, because they determine not only the pool of genetic resources, but als...

The spatial structure of biotic communities can be shaped by niche‐based or stochastic processes, and the importance of both can change through time. Niche‐based processes include neighbour interactions, which can change in intensity and quality as communities develop in dependence of environmental conditions. Epiphylls, miniature communities of li...

Prosopis pallida (algarrobo) is a highly adapted species to extremely dry and wet conditions. Its geographic distribution at both sides of the Pacific Ocean is associated with its plastic response to El Niño event, an extreme climate event that changes precipitation regimes. In this review, we summarized the current knowledge of this versatile spec...

Las bases de datos de biodiversidad sirven para entender los patrones de diversidad a nivel mundial, así como los mecanismos que la determinan. La constitución de estas bases de datos influye en la forma en que la biodiversidad es conocida y representada. Actualmente existen bases de datos mundiales de acceso libre que se enfocan en grupos de organ...

Aim Positive relationships between island size and species richness have been found for oceanic and non‐oceanic islands. However, the effect of isolation, also predicted by island‐biogeographical theory, seems challenging to test. Species‐specific mechanisms drive the perception of distance and space for animals, and therefore isolation patterns ar...

Questions The importance of tropical rainforest gap dynamics in biodiversity maintenance is not fully understood, in particular for taxa other than trees and lianas. We used epiphylls on rainforest leaves to study the importance of leaf‐ and forest‐scale succession in determining biodiversity patterns by characterizing community change with leaf ag...

The interception of precipitation by vegetation has important consequences for climate and water resources. Although canopy interception has been studied for centuries, many fundamental unknowns remain. We present persistent questions that reflect challenges in measuring, representing, and understanding how terrestrial ecosystems intercept, partiti...

Epiphytes are structurally-dependent plants which grow on other plants without taking nourishment from them. Phylogenetic and ecophysiological differences divide them into non-vascular epiphytes (e.g. mosses and lichens), which are distributed worldwide, and vascular epiphytes (e.g. orchids and bromeliads), which are restricted to the tropics and s...

Vascular epiphytes contribute significantly to tropical diversity. Research on the factors that determine vascular epiphytic diversity and composition in tropical areas is flourishing. However, these factors are entirely unknown in tropical-temperate transition zones, which represent the distribution limit of several epiphytic species. We assessed...

We investigated the physiological responses of two epiphytic orchids under three light regimes of 20, 50, and 70% of total daily radiation under drought and rewatering conditions. Stanhopea tigrina was the one more affected because it exhibited strong photoinhibition and reduction of both electron transport rate and nocturnal acidity under drought...

Introduction. Tropical montane forests support a high abundance and diversity of bryophytes and lichens on different substrates. However, quantitative information about how their biomass and water-holding capacity change with elevation is scarce. The current project assessed variation in the biomass and water-holding capacity of bryophytes and lich...

Aim Epiphytic plants are isolated from each other by nonhabitat canopy elements and are thus expected to act as islands, the biodiversity of their inhabitants (e.g., spiders) conforming to island biogeographic predictions of species‐richness patterns. Although it has been shown that arthropod diversity decreases with decreasing epiphyte size, the e...

Ecological aspects of bryophyte and lichen distributions were analyzed on Baru Volcano, Panama. At 8 elevations between 1900 and 3300m, thickness, biomass and water-holding capacity of the bryophyte/lichen layer were determined. All increased with elevation, but substrates differed. Those close to the ground (soil, rocks, logs) showed the strongest...

Earlier snowmelt changes spring stress exposure and growing-season length, possibly causing shifts in plant species dominance. If such shifts involve trees, this may lead to changes in treeline position. We hypothesized that earlier snowmelt would negatively affect the performance of tree seedlings near the treeline due to higher spring stress leve...

A recommendation for a minimal sampling effort to reliably estimate tree- and stand-level epiphyte loads.

We assessed the diversity, vertical distribution, and the effect of structural and geographical factors on the diversity of vascular epiphyte assemblages (VEAs) in two forest types in the “El Cielo” Biosphere Reserve. We found 2839 epiphyte individuals from 15 species on 240 host trees (27 species) in the semideciduous forest and 5085 individuals f...

Local variation in the abundance and richness of vascular epiphytes is often attributed to environmental characteristics such as substrate and microclimate. Less is known, however, about the impacts of tree and branch turnover on epiphyte communities. To address this issue, we surveyed branches and epiphytes found on the forest floor in 96 transect...

Hardly any molecular studies have been done on euendoliths of marine coastal environments, especially along the supratidal ranges of carbonate coasts. In our study, we provide a comparative sequence analysis using 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene combined with extensive microscopy of the endolithic community from rock pools o...

Information on the degree of host specificity is fundamental for an understanding of the ecology of structurally dependent plants such as vascular epiphytes. Starting with the seminal paper of A.F.W. Schimper on epiphyte ecology in the late 19th century over 200 publications have dealt with the issue of host specificity in vascular epiphytes. We re...

Do epiphytes drop out above the treeline because of climatic reasons or due to lack of appropriate substrate? We set out to address this question by studying various key aspects of their biology at a natural treeline on a tropical mountain top in Panama: species composition of assemblages, host preferences, population structure and dynamics, indivi...

Colour plates of Araceae of the Estación Científica San Francisco ("Reserva San Francisco") and environs (Podocarpus Biosphere Reserve), at 1800-2500 m asl, Zamora-Chinchipe province, SE-Ecuador.

Colour plates of Ericaceae of the Estación Científica San Francisco ("Reserva San Francisco") and environs (Podocarpus Biosphere Reserve), at 1800-2500 m asl, Zamora-Chinchipe province, SE-Ecuador.

Colour plates of epiphytic ferns and fern allies from 2000-25000 m asl at Podocarpus Biosphere Reserve, mostly from San Francisco reserve (ECSF).

The taxonomic composition of the vascular epiphyte flora at the Río Changuinola, Panama, was examined and complemented with an analysis of biogeographic affinities and physiological parameters related to plant water and nutrient relations. In an area of ca. 1000 ha, we found a total of 476 species of vascular epiphytes. This marks a new diversity r...