Molecular evidence reveals unsustainable harvest of wild orchids

Human use of wild species has long reshaped biodiversity, but the historical dynamics of exploitation are often poorly documented. In the eastern Mediterranean, orchids are harvested for the production of salep, a traditional beverage made of dried orchid tubers. Pharmaceutical and natural history museums harbour collections of these tubers dating back centuries, but their provenance and species identity remain largely unknown. Here, salep tubers spanning nearly 200 years were analyzed using target capture of orchid-specific loci to identify the likely source among 80 regional candidate species. Our approach confidently identifies up to 85 % of highly degraded tubers, enabling temporal and spatial reconstructions of harvesting patterns. We reveal a rapid expansion in the diversity of collected species in recent decades that is linked to variation in flowering time. Longer harvesting seasons and universally declining tuber sizes are consistent with a scenario of intensifying exploitation..., , # Data from: Molecular evidence reveals unsustainable harvest of wild orchids

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.mpg4f4rf5](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mpg4f4rf5)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains:

1. The assembled sequences of 205 orchid loci targeted by the Orchidinae-205 bait kit, for 7 species not previously included in the original reference dataset (Veltman et al., 2024) and 178 historical and contemporary orchid tubers identified in this study. Only individuals with a coverage of at least 40 % (~150-330kb) are included.
2. Weight and size measurements of all individual tubers belonging to the collections from which tubers were selected for sequencing.
3. Range maps of 80 candidate species occurring in the study region (Greece, Turkey and Iran) that could be targets for orchid harvesting, and the corresponding shape files.
4. Occurrence records of orchids observed during fieldwork in Iran (2013-2014), that served as input for species distribution m..., ,