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      Orchid conservation: how can we meet the challenges in the twenty-first century?

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          Abstract

          With c. 28,000 species, orchids are one of the largest families of flowering plants, and they are also one of the most threatened, in part due to their complex life history strategies. Threats include habitat destruction and climate change, but many orchids are also threatened by unsustainable (often illegal and/or undocumented) harvest for horticulture, food or medicine. The level of these threats now outstrips our abilities to combat them at a species-by-species basis for all species in such a large group as Orchidaceae; if we are to be successful in conserving orchids for the future, we will need to develop approaches that allow us to address the threats on a broader scale to complement focused approaches for the species that are identified as being at the highest risk.

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          Most cited references62

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          Terrestrial orchid conservation in the age of extinction.

          Conservation through reserves alone is now considered unlikely to achieve protection of plant species necessary to mitigate direct losses of habitat and the pervasive impact of global climate change. Assisted translocation/migration represent new challenges in the face of climate change; species, particularly orchids, will need artificial assistance to migrate from hostile environments, across ecological barriers (alienated lands such as farmlands and built infrastructure) to new climatically buffered sites. The technology and science to underpin assisted migration concepts are in their infancy for plants in general, and orchids, with their high degree of rarity, represent a particularly challenging group for which these principles need to be developed. It is likely that orchids, more than any other plant family, will be in the front-line of species to suffer large-scale extinction events as a result of climate change. The South West Australian Floristic Region (SWAFR) is the only global biodiversity hotspot in Australia and represents an ideal test-bed for development of orchid conservation principles. Orchids comprise 6 % of all threatened vascular plants in the SWAFR, with 76 out of the 407 species known for the region having a high level of conservation risk. The situation in the SWAFR is a portent of the global crisis in terrestrial orchid conservation, and it is a region where innovative conservation solutions will be required if the impending wave of extinction is to be averted. Major threatening processes are varied, and include land clearance, salinity, burning, weed encroachment, disease and pests. This is compounded by highly specialized pollinators (locally endemic native invertebrates) and, in the most threatened groups such as hammer orchids (Drakaea) and spider orchids (Caladenia), high levels of mycorrhizal specialization. Management and development of effective conservation strategies for SWAFR orchids require a wide range of integrated scientific approaches to mitigate impacts that directly influence ecological traits critical for survival. In response to threats to orchid species, integrated conservation approaches have been adopted (including ex situ and translocation principles) in the SWAFR with the result that a significant, multidisciplinary approach is under development to facilitate conservation of some of the most threatened taxa and build expertise to carry out assisted migration to new sites. Here the past two decades of orchid conservation research in the SWAFR and the role of research-based approaches for managing effective orchid conservation in a global biodiversity hotspot are reviewed.
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            An updated classification of Orchidaceae

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              Habitat Loss and Extinction in the Hotspots of Biodiversity

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                m.fay@kew.org
                Journal
                Bot Stud
                Bot Stud
                Botanical Studies
                Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )
                1817-406X
                1999-3110
                5 June 2018
                5 June 2018
                December 2018
                : 59
                : 16
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2097 4353, GRID grid.4903.e, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, ; Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB UK
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1936 7910, GRID grid.1012.2, School of Biological Sciences, , University of Western Australia, ; Crawley, WA 6009 Australia
                Article
                232
                10.1186/s40529-018-0232-z
                5988927
                29872972
                99f45f46-ad82-4a0c-90db-43b97d9d1bc6
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

                History
                : 10 April 2018
                : 1 June 2018
                Categories
                Review
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2018

                conservation priorities,systematics,phylogenetics,population genetics,in situ conservation,ex situ conservation,integrated conservation,mycorrhizas,pollination,illegal trade,cites,red list

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