Colombia's ecological treasure trove

[Judi Lynn]

Since the civil war ended, scientists have been racing to track the country’s stunning biodiversity — before it’s too late.

By Aisling Irwin
19 July 2023

Some 3,500 metres up in Colombia’s Sumapaz mountains, the mist is rushing and the air is cold and thin. A thousand frailejones — plants of human height and girth — stand like silent guardians in the landscape, their thick brown stems and silver-green crowns like apparitions in the fog. This is the paramo, an ecosystem in the high Andes, where the strange shrubs are exquisitely adapted to the often-fierce ultraviolet radiation, low temperatures and high humidity. And in the past few years, this unusual environment has begun to give up its secrets.

Scientists have waited for decades to study the paramos and dozens of other ecosystems across Colombia. Until a few years ago, many of them were off limits because of civil war. When the government made peace with the main guerrilla force, FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), in 2016, huge tracts of unexplored forests, caves and mountains became accessible.

The years since then have been frenetic for Colombia’s natural and social scientists, whose country is one of the most biodiverse in the world. The government has launched expeditions and research projects, sometimes recruiting former guerrillas as guides and citizen scientists; other countries have contributed funds and more research staff. With some major projects now publishing their final papers, researchers have described tens of thousands of species new to Colombia and hundreds new to science — increasing the number of known species in the country by 50%. Storage facilities are straining to accommodate the bounty of specimens and samples.

Colombia’s national biodiversity database, SiB Colombia, has helped both scientists and citizens contribute to the effort. It has “been a shining example of how to gather biodiversity data”, says Kyle Copas, a spokesperson for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility in Copenhagen, an international network that shares biodiversity data.

The findings signal a new era for Colombian ecology, says Mauricio Diazgranados, a Colombian botanist who led a number of the research projects on behalf of the UK Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. “We are living in the spring, in terms of research interests in the country,” he says.

More:
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-023-02300-6/index.html

[SWBTATTReg]

1. This is good news, that the biodiversity of the plant and animal flora will now be studied and

added to the giant CPU in the sky, available to all who wish to access this information. It will take years, if not decades, to correlate and assimilate this new knowledge, how exciting!