Sven Batke

Edge Hill University · Biology

Vascular epiphytes are a major biomass component of forests across the globe and they contribute to 9% of global vascular plant diversity. To improve our understanding of the whole-plant response of epiphytes to future climate change, we investigated for the first time both individual and combined effects of elevated CO2 (560 ppm) and light on the...

Societal Impact Statement Cave art has been an integral part of human history, providing a glimpse into the lives and cultures of our ancestors. Prehistoric botanical art is an important medium that can help us to redefine our intimate relationship with plants. The findings from our work provide some evidence from the European Palaeolithic period t...

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...

Increasing urban expansion has resulted in the decline of many natural and seminatural communities globally. However, the connectivity and genetic structure of species that survive in these urban landscapes have received little attention, especially with regard to epiphytic plants. This study aimed to describe and evaluate the connectivity and gene...

Climatic niches are key factors driving global and regional species distributions. The Atlantic Forest domain is considered one of the most threatened biomes in the world, and one of the main centres of plant diversity and endemism in the Neotropics. Of the over 13,000 species of vascular plants, nearly 15% are vascular epiphytes. Here we analysed...

Botanical skills are endangered. Fewer scientists learn about plants and recently one of the UK's last species identification degrees has been cut. How do we reverse the extinction of botanical education? Cue Botanical University Challenge!

Honduran fern and lycophyte taxa under present and future climates. We found that species were distributed throughout most of the available climatic space. Under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 projections 128 to 391 species will have their average niche positions outside of the predicted available climatic space by the years 2049-2099. Particularly affected wil...

Honduras is one of the least botanically studied countries in Central America. Most of the scientific botanical information for Honduras is housed in globally distributed herbaria, an often-under-used resource. A recently published checklist of ferns and lycopods from Honduras indicated that for the 713 taxa, often few distribution data are availab...

Forest canopies are incredibly complex self-maintaining biological structures. Conditions above and within the canopy can differ vastly, often resulting in a vertical gradient of microclimate conditions. Canopy epiphytic plants have to deal with climatic variability on much more variable scales compared to many other plant groups. The difficulty of...

Increasing urban expansion has resulted in the decline of many natural and semi-natural communities globally. However, the connectivity and genetic structure of species that survive in these urban landscapes has received little attention, especially with regard to epiphytic plants. The aims of this study were to 1) investigate how an urban landscap...

Honduras is one of the least botanically studied countries in Central America. Most of the scientific botanical information for Honduras is housed in globally distributed herbaria, an often-under-used resource. A recently published checklist of ferns and lycopods from Honduras indicated that for the 713 taxa, often few distribution data are availab...

Humid coastal dune slacks are an endangered habitat in Northwestern Europe. In the UK, dune slacks are currently classified as being in ‘unfavourable’ condition, with projected decrease in England of up to 30% by 2036. Studies in mainland Europe suggest that regional factors (e.g. slack area, age, and isolation) are more important than local factor...

Cloud forests are amongst the most biologically unique, yet threatened, ecosystems in Mesoamerica. We summarize the ecological value and conservation status of a well-studied cloud forest site: Cusuco National Park (CNP), a 23,440 ha protected area in the Merendón mountains, northwest Honduras. We show cnp to have exceptional biodiversity; of 966 t...

IPCC predictions for Honduras indicate that temperature will increase by up to 3-6°C and precipitation will decrease by up to 7-13% by the year 2050. To better understand how fern and lycophyte communities might be affected by climate change, we comprehensively surveyed the community compositions of ferns and lycophytes at Celaque National Park, th...

For over two decades no attempt has been made to update the checklist of Ferns and Lycophytes (hereafter only referred to as pteridophytes) of Honduras. In 1996 Nelson-Sutherland and co-workers published the first fully annotated checklist for the country, which included 651 named species (680 taxa including varieties and hybrids). However, phyloge...

The numbers of visitors to greenspaces in the United Kingdom has increased over the last few years as the health benefits of spending time in greenspaces have become better known. This has led to problems for conservation ecologists due to increased numbers of reported human-wildlife encounters. Deer are often found in public spaces and are of part...

Plant-blindness' (PB) is the inability to see or notice plants in one's own environment. There has been growing concerns amongst biologists that PB is becoming an increasing issue in young university students. However, currently we are still lacking detailed quantitative data that would allow us to determine the exact underlying causes for this tre...

The botanical and floral diversity of the Bay Islands, Honduras, has received little scientific attention. Here an additional locality is reported for the mycoheterotrophic species Voyria aphylla (Jacq.) Pers. (Gentianaceae), from within mixed swamp forest and neotropical savannah habitat on the island of Utila. SPANISH RESUMEN: La diversidad botán...

Background: The international movement of used tyres is a major factor responsible for global introductions of Aedes invasive mosquitoes (AIMs) (Diptera: Culicidae) that are major disease vectors (e.g. dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever). Surveillance methods are restricted by expense, availability and efficiency to detect all life stages....

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...

Main conclusion Our study demonstrated that the species respond non-linearly to increases in CO2 concentration when exposed to decadal changes in CO2, representing the year 1987, 2025, 2051, and 2070, respectively. Abstract There are several lines of evidence suggesting that the vast majority of C3 plants respond to elevated atmospheric CO2 by dec...

This is a short documentary ITN made in collaboration with the Royal Society of Biology on our research. Video link: https://itnproductions.wistia.com/medias/8bq9drih5u

Stomatal conductance (gs) in terrestrial vegetation regulates the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and water loss through transpiration, closely linking the biosphere and atmosphere and influencing climate. Yet, the range and pattern of gs in plants from natural ecosystems across broad geographic, climatic, and taxonomic rang...

The botanical and floral diversity of Islas de la Bahia, Honduras; has received little scientific attention. Here we report an additional new locality for the mycoheterotrophic species Voyria aphylla (Jacq.) Pers. (Gentianaceae), from within mixed swamp forest and neotropical savannah habitat on Isla de Utila. We also provide records of sympatric o...

Background and Aims Studies have indicated that plant stomatal conductance (gs) decreases in response to elevated atmospheric CO2, a phenomenon of significance for the global hydrological cycle. However, gs increases across certain CO2 ranges have been predicted by optimization models. The aim of this work was to demonstrate that under certain envi...

One strategy for plants to optimize stomatal function is to open and close their stomata quickly in response to environmental signals. It is generally assumed that small stomata can alter aperture faster than large stomata. We tested the hypothesis that species with small stomata close faster than species with larger stomata in response to darkness...

In this paper, we compared epiphyte inventories from Honduras to recent published floristic inventories from other Central American countries including Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Belize. Previous estimates of vascular epiphytes have revealed that approximately 9 % of all global plants are epiphytes and that in some countries they contribute...

The use of bryophyte and lichen cover as a proxy for air relative humidity (RH) and temperature in tropical forests has been widely proposed. Many studies that have assessed the usefulness of such indicators have mostly focused on estimates from ground observations. Here we identify the usefulness of bryophyte and lichen cover to estimate RH and te...

The severity of the effects that large disturbance events such as hurricanes can have on the forest canopy and the associated mechanically dependent plant community (epiphytes, climbers, etc.) are dependent on the frequency and intensity of the disturbance events. Here we investigate the effects of different structural and environmental properties...

Fungal endophytes have great potential as biocontrol and biofertilisation agents for food crops, and it is important to understand and optimise the cultural conditions for endophyte emergence and growth. A range of commercial culture media were tested for their effect on endophyte recovery from the roots of their host (Hordeum murinum), and for the...

The Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research (TCBR) is one of Ireland’s largest biodiversity research centres. The TCBR facilitates and conducts multidisciplinary and international research on biodiversity related topics. Since 2007 over 250 peer-reviewed articles were published as part of the TCBR group and over €7.5 million was raised in internat...

Past studies of large, infrequent wind disturbances have shown that topographical, biological and meteorological factors interact to create complex damage patterns to forest ecosystems. However, the extent to which some of these factors change the forest microclimate along a vertical forest profile is poorly known. In a previous study, we correlate...

High energy weather events are often expected to play a substantial role in biotic community dynamics and large scale diversity patterns but their contribution is hard to prove. Currently, observations are limited to the documentation of accidental records after the passing of such events. A more comprehensive approach is synthesising weather event...

The first investigation into epiphyte diversity, distribution and biomass on large canopy trees in Honduras, carried out between June and August 2012 in Cusuco National Park, has begun to reveal just how diverse these communities are: there are more than 100 different epiphyte species found within a small area, and an individual branch may be harbo...

The vertical distribution of the density and richness of vascular and nonvascular epiphytes on some mature trees was studied in two 1 km² plots in Miombo Woodland in Zambia (n = 20) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) (n = 20). The aim was to assess the diversity of arboreal epiphytes and to investigate general distribution patterns of ep...

Modern rope access techniques combined with the latest technology are opening up the rainforest canopy and allowing ecologists to survey a much neglected area. The rainforest canopy is only 30 to 50 metres up, yet because it is practically inaccessible and obscured by lower layers of foliage, it never receives anything close to the scientific scrut...

The development of new and more versatile access techniques is a major contributor to the continuously growing field of canopy research. Methods such as cranes, canopy walkways, hot-air balloons, ladders and rope access techniques enabled scientist for the first time to conduct proximate studies of canopy organisms. One of the most studied groups o...