Something from nothing: Using landscape similarity and ecological niche modeling to find rare plant species

SummaryWe present a worked example of how geographic and computational tools can aid in discovery and documenting unknown or poorly known populations and distributions of rare plant species. Focusing on Byrsonima subterranea, a rare plant of the cerrado biome in Brazil, considered probably extinct in the state of São Paulo, we used a combination of a simple environmental matching approach to locate extant populations in the state, and then a more complex ecological niche modeling approach to predict distribution of the species over a broader area. These methodologies have the potential to assist in documenting distributions of many rare plant species.