Justin Moat

• PhD
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Extinction results in not only loss of species, but also loss of the unique evolutionary history that they represent and the irreplaceable features they exhibit. There is broad consensus regarding the necessity to optimise the preservation of the tree of life by including evolutionary information in conservation prioritisation, a notion also endors...

Societal Impact Statement Addressing the burning environmental crisis, we explore how the ‘extreme sport’ of paramotoring can enhance and accelerate scientific exploration with minimal environmental impact compared to off‐road vehicles. Our study demonstrates the scientific potential of paramotoring to access fragile desert ecosystems and investiga...

Austrocylindropuntia pachypus (K.Schum.) Backeb. it is an endemic cactus whose distribution was restricted to the western slopes of La Libertad, Ancash, Lima; and based on botanical expeditions through the Andean foothills of Ica, new records are reported with reduced populations of A. pachypus, which makes it possible to extend its known distribut...

Giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are some of the UK’s largest trees, despite only being introduced in the mid-nineteenth century. There are an estimated half a million giant sequoias and closely related coastal redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) in the UK. Given the recent interest in planting more trees, partly due to their carbon sequestrat...

The little-known and infrequently collected papilionoid legume genus Weberbauerella, is only known from outlying regions of the Atacama Desert. Presently it comprises three species, one in Chile and two in Peru. These small, woody, perennial species, enigmatic in both occurrence and form, are found growing in isolated populations in climatically ex...

Fog oases ( lomas ) present pockets of verdant vegetation within the arid coastal desert of Andean South America and archaeological excavation within some of the oases has revealed a long history of human exploitation of these landscapes. Yet lomas settlements are under-represented in archaeological datasets due to their tendency to be located in r...

Guiding Principles for Investing in Nature Here are ten steps to consider, when it comes to investing in nature to reach net zero. 1. Take a holistic approach – consider the whole ecosystem for nature and people 2. Create multiple positive impacts – avoid negative impacts 3. Plan for the long term 4. Build in climate resilience and adaptation, fro...

Madagascar's biota is hyperdiverse and includes exceptional levels of endemicity. We review the current state of knowledge on Madagascar's past and current terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by compiling and presenting comprehensive data on species diversity, endemism, and rates of species description and human uses, in addition to presenting...

Madagascar's unique biota is heavily affected by human activity and is under intense threat. Here, we review the current state of knowledge on the conservation status of Madagascar's terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by presenting data and analyses on documented and predicted species-level conservation statuses, the most prevalent and relevan...

As the United Nations develops a post-2020 global biodiversity framework for the Convention on Biological Diversity, attention is focusing on how new goals and targets for ecosystem conservation might serve its vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’1,2. Advancing dual imperatives to conserve biodiversity and sustain ecosystem services requires r...

Rapid evolution via small shifts in allele frequencies at thousands of loci are a long- standing neo-Darwinian prediction but are hard to characterize in the wild. European ash tree ( Fraxinus excelsior ) populations have recently come under strong selection by the invasive fungal pathogen Hymenoscyphus fraxineus . Using genomic prediction models b...

Shell middens are conspicuous manifestations of the exploitation of rich, sustainable, easily seen and harvested marine resources that, worldwide, enabled hunter-gatherers to reduce mobility and increase population and social complexity. Globally, known sites tend to cluster chronologically around 6 k BP, after slowing eustatic sea-level rise, alth...

Frédéric Engel (1981:24), el pionero de los estudios del Precerámico en el Perú, argumentó que la distribución de los sitios arqueológicos durante el Holoceno temprano fue determinada por “la capacidad de las lomas” –oasis estacionales producidos por la humedad oceánica que están presentes a lo largo de la costa del Perú– una proposición que aún se...

Cultivated Arabica coffee outside Ethiopia is plagued by low genetic diversity, compromising disease resistance, climate resiliency and sensory potential. Access to the wider genetic diversity of this species may circumvent some of these problems. In addition to Ethiopia, South Sudan has been postulated as a center of origin for Arabica coffee, but...

Cultivated Arabica coffee outside Ethiopia is plagued by low genetic diversity, compromising disease resistance, climate resiliency and sensory potential. Access to the wider genetic diversity of this species may circumvent some of these problems. In addition to Ethiopia, South Sudan has been postulated as a center of origin for Arabica coffee, but...

Climate change poses a considerable challenge for coffee farming, due to increasing temperatures, worsening weather perturbations, and shifts in the quantity and timing of precipitation. Of the actions required for ensuring climate resilience for coffee, changing the crop itself is paramount, and this may have to include using alternative coffee cr...

The desert fog oasis ecosystem of Peru and Chile comprises numerous oases along 3000 km of the Pacific coastal belt, it hosts a highly endemic flora, providing vital ecosystem services and genetic resources. However, due to their marked seasonality and fog cover they are poorly mapped, greatly compromising their conservation. Here we redress this u...

The aim of our study was to assess the importance of different Colombian bioregions in terms of the supply of useful plant species and the quality of the available distribution data. We assembled a dataset of georeferenced collection localities of all vascular plants of Colombia available from global and local online databases. We then assembled a...

There are numerous factors to consider when developing climate-resilient coffee crops, including the ability to tolerate altered climatic conditions, meet agronomic and value chain criteria, and satisfy consumer preferences for flavour (aroma and taste). We evaluated the sensory characteristics and key environmental requirements for the enigmatic n...

The specialty coffee sector represents opportunities for coffee farmers and other actors due to increased value within the supply chain, driven by elevated consumer purchase prices. We investigated these relationships up to the export stage, as well as the potential for specialty coffee to improve stakeholder participation in biodiversity conservat...

The Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia project is a 2.5-year initiative led by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in collaboration with the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute. Its aim is to develop pathways to enhance nature’s contribution to people in Colombia by increasing, consolidating and making accessible the knowledge of...

Our recent data, collected using remotely sensed imagery and unmanned aerial vehicle surveys, reveal the extremely well-defined patterning of archaeological plaza villages in the Brazilian Acre state in terms of size, layout, chronology, and material culture. The villages comprise various earthen mounds arranged around central plazas and roads that...

The coastal desert of Peru and Chile is home to Prosopis (Leguminosae: Mimosoideae) tree species that are exceptionally well-adapted to the hyperarid conditions and keystone in dry-forest ecosystems. From 2001 to 2018, Prosopis in Peru have suffered widespread defoliation and die-back, with consequent deforestation and collapse in pod production. T...

Plants are under‐represented in conservation efforts, with only 9% of described species published on the IUCN Red List. Biodiversity aggregators including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the more recent Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) contain a wealth of potentially useful occurrence data. We investigate the...

1. Trees are a foundation for biodiversity in urban ecosystems and therefore must be able to withstand global change and biological challenges over decades and even centuries to prevent urban ecosystems from deteriorating. Tree quality and diversity should be prioritised over simply numbers to optimise resilience to these challenges. Successful est...

Societal Impact Statement Bioenergy is a major component of the global transition to renewable energy technologies. The plant and fungal kingdoms offer great potential but remain mostly untapped. Their increased use could contribute to the renewable energy transition and addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 “Ensure access to...

Plant and fungal biodiversity support all life on earth and merit careful stewardship in an increasingly uncertain environment. However, gaps and biases in documented extinction risks to plant and fungal species impede effective management. Formal extinction risk assessments help avoid extinctions, through engagement, financial or legal mechanisms,...

Societal Impact Statement Plant and fungal specimens provide the auditable evidence that a particular organism occurred at a particular place, and at a particular point in time, verifying past occurrence and distribution. They also document the aspects of human exploration and culture. Collectively specimens form a global asset with significant pot...

Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi project provides assessments of our current knowledge of the diversity of plants and fungi on Earth, the global threats that they face, and the policies to safeguard them. Produced in conjunction with an international scientific symposium, Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi sets an important inte...

Bioenergy is a major component of the global transition to renewable energy technologies. The plant and fungal kingdoms offer great potential but remain mostly untapped. Their increased use could contribute to the renewable energy transition and addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sus...

Aim Effective policymaking for biological conservation requires the identification and ranking of the most important areas for protection or management. One of the most frequently used systems for selecting priority areas is the Key Biodiversity Areas (hereafter KBAs), developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). However,...

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species TM (hereafter the Red List) is an important global resource for conservation that supports conservation planning, safeguarding critical habitat and monitoring biodiversity change (Rodrigues et al. 2006). However, a major shortcoming of the Red List is that most of the world's described species have not yet be...

Aim In order to implement effective conservation policies, it is crucial to know how biodiversity is distributed and one of the most widely used systems is the Key Biodiversity Areas (hereafter KBA) criteria, developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Here we develop a tool to rank Key Biodiversity Areas in a continuous...

Teloschistes peruensis is a bright orange lichen with a narrow distribution in Peru and Chile. Its AOO is 8 km2 and it is extant at only two locations. Its population size, area of occupancy (AOO), extent of occurrence (EOO), habitat quality, and the number of locations where it occurs have declined substantially due to development, off-road recrea...

Karst is defined as landscapes that are underlain by soluble rock in which there is appreciable water movement arising from a combination of high rock solubility and well-developed secondary (fracture) porosity. Karsts occupy approximately 20% of the planet’s dry ice-free land and are of great socioeconomic importance, as they supply water to up to...

The coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) is the most damaging insect pest of global coffee production. Despite its importance, our knowledge on the insect’s natural habitat, range, and wild host species remains poorly known. Using archival sources (mainly herbaria but also other museum collections), we surveyed 18,667 predominantly wild-collect...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used for many scientific applications, including archaeological surveys. We test the suitability and practicability of UAV surveying in the tropical lowlands of Brazil and techniques for visualizing the resulting digital elevation models, specifically the Red Relief Image Map (RRIM). We present the r...

More than 31,000 useful plant species have been documented to fulfil needs and services for humans or the animals and environment we depend on. Despite this diversity, humans currently satisfy most requirements with surprisingly few plant species; for example, just three crops – rice, wheat and maize – comprise more than 50% of plant derived calori...

In an era of increasing threat most species of plant still lack an assessment of extinction risk or an understanding of priority for conservation. Evolutionary distinctiveness (ED) has been used in conjunction with extinction risk to prioritise species for conservation. We apply this approach to an economically important group of plants in Africa;...

Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) is a key crop in many tropical countries and globally provides an export value of over US$13 billion per year. Wild Arabica coffee is of fundamental importance for the global coffee sector and of direct importance within Ethiopia, as a source of harvestable income and planting stock. Published studies show that clima...

Wild coffee species are critical for coffee crop development and, thus, for sustainability of global coffee production. Despite this fact, the extinction risk and conservation priority status of the world’s coffee species are poorly known. Applying IUCN Red List of Threatened Species criteria to all (124) wild coffee species, we undertook a gap ana...

Davis, A.P., Wilkinson, T., Challa, Z.K., Williams, J., Baena, S., Gole, T.W. & Moat, J. (2018). Coffee Atlas of Ethiopia. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK).

We are facing an ever-increasing environmental crisis on our planet, with multiple threats from humankind. Industrialisation, deforestation, overpopulation and exploitation of our natural resources is driving species to extinction and changing the environment we live in. We need to plan for the future in order to adapt or mitigate these risks. Rece...

The ‘modifiable areal unit problem’ is prevalent across many aspects of spatial analysis within ecology and conservation. The problem is particularly manifest when calculating metrics for extinction risk estimation, for example, area of occupancy (AOO). Although embedded into the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List cr...

Driven by limited resources and a sense of urgency, the prioritization of species for conservation has been a persistent concern in conservation science. Gymnosperms (comprising ginkgo, conifers, cycads, and gnetophytes) are one of the most threatened groups of living organisms, with 40% of the species at high risk of extinction, about twice as man...

The Pacific Equatorial dry forest of Northern Peru is recognised for its unique endemic biodiversity. Although highly threatened the forest provides livelihoods and ecosystem services to local communities. As agro-industrial expansion and climatic variation transform the region, close ecosystem monitoring is essential for viable adaptation strategi...

Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) (more commonly called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, UAVs or drones), have the potential to enhance current understanding and management of a range of environmental applications. There has been much coverage on the use of UAVs for conservation applications in the recent years, yet little on specific applications in p...

Coffee farming provides livelihoods for around 15 million farmers in Ethiopia and generates a quarter of the country's export earnings. Against a backdrop of rapidly increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfall, there is an urgent need to understand the influence of climate change on coffee production. Using a modelling approach in combination w...

Each year we take a closer look at the status of plants in a particular region. This year we look at the current status of knowledge on plants in Madagascar.

Moat, J., Williams, J., Baena, S., Wilkinson, Demissew, S., Challa, Z.K., T., Gole, T.W. & Davis, A.P. (2017). Coffee Farming and Climate Change in Ethiopia: Impacts, Forecasts, Resilience and Opportunities. Summary Report 2017. The Strategic Climate Institutions Programme (SCIP). Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK). Pp. 37.

The Falkland Islands are predicted to experience up to 2.2°C rise in mean annual temperature over the coming century, greater than four times the rate over the last century. Our study investigates likely vulnerabilities of a suite of range-restricted species whose distributions are associated with archipelago-wide climatic variation. We used presen...

Itigi thicket is a spatially restricted ecosystem only present in Zambia and Tanzania. It is thought to be highly threatened and therefore we need to urgently assess the threats to this ecosystem as well as extent and rates of change to derive its true conservation status. In this study we focus on the Itigi-Sumbu thicket surrounding Lake Mweru Wan...

Establishing extinction of a given species is difficult, and species thought to be extinct are rediscovered with surprising frequency. Achieving precision in the fact or date of extinction of a plant species is particularly challenging. Before extinction is declared, analysis is required of factors such as collecting effort over time, life history...

Pine forests in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) have been under extreme threat of disappearing since the non-native, invasive and pine-specific pine tortoise scale insect (Toumeyella parvicornis) was accidentally introduced to the islands over a decade ago. This invasive species has killed the vast majority of the Vulnerable and endemic Caicos p...

Extent of Occurrence (EOO) is a key metric in assessing extinction risk using the IUCN Red List categories and criteria. However, the way in which EOO is estimated from maps of species' distributions is inconsistent between assessments of different species, and between major taxonomic groups. It is often estimated from the area of mapped distributi...

Grasses, by their high productivity even under very low pCO(2), their ability to survive repeated burning and to tolerate long dry seasons, have transformed the terrestrial biomes in the Neogene and Quaternary. The expansion of grasslands at the cost of biodiverse forest biomes in Madagascar is often postulated as a consequence of the Holocene sett...

Grasses, by their high productivity even under very low pCO2, their ability to survive repeated burning and to tolerate long dry seasons, have transformed the terrestrial biomes in the Neogene and Quaternary. The expansion of grasslands at the cost of biodiverse forest biomes in Madagascar is often postulated as a consequence of the Holocene settle...

Arthur Francis George Kerr’s life is reviewed and related to a previously published account. Kerr’s collecting activity is analysed using an expanded version of the Thai Biogeography Group’s database of collections. 8,666 of the total 48,970 collections are Kerr’s and 3,178 are those of his colleagues and friends. Therefore, the total number of col...

Lomas ? ephemeral seasonal oases sustained by ocean fogs ? were critical to ancient human ecology on the desert Pacific coast of Peru: one of humanity?s few independent hearths of agriculture and ?pristine? civilisation. The role of climate change since the Late Pleistocene in determining productivity and extent of past lomas ecosystems has been mu...

Plants provide fundamental support systems for life on Earth and are the basis for all terrestrial ecosystems; a decline in plant diversity will be detrimental to all other groups of organisms including humans. Decline in plant diversity has been hard to quantify, due to the huge numbers of known and yet to be discovered species and the lack of an...

The Caicos pine Pinus caribaea var. bahamensis is endemic to the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) and the Bahamas, where it is the dominant species in the pine forest ecosystem. Pine forests in TCI cover only 13km2 and have been under severe threat of extinction in the past decade. A severe infestation by the non-native and pine-specific pine tortois...

There is increased evidence that incorporating evolutionary history directly in conservation actions is beneficial, particularly given the likelihood that extinction is not random and that phylogenetic diversity (PD) is lost at higher rates than species diversity. This evidence is even more compelling in biodiversity hotspots, such as Madagascar, w...

The IUCN Sampled Red List Index (SRLI) is a policy response by biodiversity scientists to the need to estimate trends in extinction risk of the world's diminishing biological diversity. Assessments of plant species for the SRLI project rely predominantly on herbarium specimen data from natural history collections, in the overwhelming absence of acc...

The recent acceleration of actions to conserve plant species using ex situ and in situ strategies has revealed the need to understand how these two approaches might be better developed and integrated in their application to tree species. Here we review some of the recent successes relating mainly to tree seed biology that have resulted in the devel...

The establishment of baseline IUCN Red List assessments for plants is a crucial step in conservation planning. Nowhere is this more important than in biodiversity hotspots that are subject to significant anthropogenic pressures, such as Madagascar. Here, all Madagascar palm species are assessed using the IUCN Red List categories and criteria, versi...

Arthur Francis George Kerr’s life is reviewed and related to a previously published account. Kerr’s collecting activityis analysed using an expanded version of the Thai Biogeography Group’s database of collections. 8,666 of the total 48,970 collections are Kerr’s and 3,178 are those of his colleagues and friends. Therefore, the total number of coll...

An understanding of risks to biodiversity is needed for planning action to slow current rates of decline and secure ecosystem services for future human use. Although the IUCN Red List criteria provide an effective assessment protocol for species, a standard global assessment of risks to higher levels of biodiversity is currently limited. In 2008, I...

Definitions of terms. (PDF)

The distribution of rainforest in many regions across the Earth was strongly affected by Pleistocene ice ages. However, the extent to which these dynamics are still important for modern-day biodiversity patterns within tropical biodiversity hotspots has not been assessed. We employ a comprehensive dataset of Madagascan palms (Arecaceae) and climate...

Precise modelling of the influence of climate change on Arabica coffee is limited; there are no data available for indigenous populations of this species. In this study we model the present and future predicted distribution of indigenous Arabica, and identify priorities in order to facilitate appropriate decision making for conservation, monitoring...

The Harapan Rainforest in the Indonesian province of Jambi, Sumatra is one of the few effectively protected areas in the lowlands of Sumatra. It is a former logging concession which has been leased for 99 years by the RSPB in collaboration with their Indonesian partner, Burung Indonesia. As part of the lease agreement, the area needs to be manag...

Key findings: • One in five plants are threatened with extinction • Tropical rainforest contains the highest number of threatened species • Gymnosperms (the plant group including conifers and cycads) are the most threatened group • About a third of plants are so poorly known that we still do not know whether or not they are threatened • The impact...

GeoCAT is an open source, browser based tool that performs rapid geospatial analysis to ease the process of Red Listing taxa. Developed to utilise spatially referenced primary occurrence data, the analysis focuses on two aspects of the geographic range of a taxon: the extent of occurrence (EOO) and the area of occupancy (AOO). These metrics form pa...

The cDNA-AFLP data matrix and input file for SAM [58]. Excel file with one worksheet comprising the cDNA-AFLP binary data for diploid and polyploid individuals analysed here. A second worksheet includes the input for SAM [58].