Twenty years of big plant genera

Moonlight, PW, Baldaszti, L, Cardoso, D, Elliott, A, Särkinen, T, Knapp, S (2024) Twenty years of big plant genera. Proceedings of the Royal Soiety B 291: 20240702, http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.0702. Summary: We use data from the World Flora Online (WFO) to provide an updated list of big (>500 species) and megadiverse (>1,000 species) flowering plant genera and highlight changes since the last review in 2004. The number of big genera has increased from 57 to 86; today one of every four plant species is classified as a member of a big genus, with 14% in just 28 megadiverse genera. Most (71%) of the growth in big genera since 2000 is the result of new species description, not generic re-circumscription. More than 15% of all currently accepted flowering plant species described in the last two decades are in big genera, suggesting that groups previously considered intractable are now being actively studied taxonomically. Despite this rapid growth in big genera, they remain a significant yet understudied proportion of plant diversity. Code version: R version 4.3.3 Four files included: 1. R code used in simulations (as R file; Big Genera Simulations.R) 2. Accepted genera of flowering plants from December 2023 World Flora Online download (WFO_genera Accepted genera and sizes Dec 2023 update.csv) includes all accepted flowering plant genera from the World Flora Online 3. Accepted species names in flowering plants from December 2023 World Flora Online download (WFO_species_Angiosperm Species Level Names Accepted Dec 2023 Update.csv) includes all accepted species from World Flora Online 4. New species names coined in flowering plants since the year 2000 (IPNI_species_described post 2000.csv) includes all species described in flowering plants since the year 2000