The colonial legacy of herbaria.

Herbarium collections shape our understanding of Earth's flora and are crucial for addressing global change issues. Their formation, however, is not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in natural history collections, herbaria have received comparatively less attention. While it has been noted that the majority of plant specimens are housed in the Global North, the extent and magnitude of this disparity have not been quantified. Here we examine the colonial legacy of botanical collections, analysing 85,621,930 specimen records and assessing survey responses from 92 herbarium collections across 39 countries. We find an inverse relationship between where plant diversity exists in nature and where it is housed in herbaria. Such disparities persist across physical and digital realms despite overt colonialism ending over half a century ago. We emphasize the need for acknowledging the colonial history of herbarium collections and implementing a more equitable global paradigm for their collection, curation and use.

Fruits eaten by woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lagothricha) at local and regional scales.

Woolly monkeys are endangered New World Primates whose natural ecological requirements are known from few sites. This study aimed to investigate the diet of woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lagothricha, Atelidae) to examine how availability determines fruit choice at local and regional scales. We followed two groups of woolly monkeys in the Mosiro Itajura-Caparú biological station in the Colombian Amazon for 16 months, and then compared our observations with previous studies for this and other sites in the Amazon and eastern Andes. We found a high prevalence of fruits in the diet of woolly monkeys in Caparú, which was supplemented with arthropods and leaves. This pattern was observed in all age/sex classes, although juveniles ate more arthropods, and females with dependent young ate more leaves than other classes. We suggest these differences might be due to intragroup competition and particular nutritional requirements in each age/sex class. When comparing the fruit diet composition in Caparú (>190 species) with four other places, we found that Moraceae, Fabaceae, and Sapotaceae were consistently important tree families in the Amazonian sites, and that forest richness is a good predictor of the diet richness. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that woolly monkeys are opportunistic frugivores that are able to adapt their diet to the forest supply and to the temporal variation in resource availability.

[Diet of the capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris (Rodentia: Hydrocharidae) in Caño Limón, Arauca, Colombia]. / Dieta del capibara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris (Rodentia: Hydrochaeridae) en Caño Limón, Arauca, Colombia.

We studied the composition and seasonal variation of the diet of the capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris) in the flooded savannas of Caño Limón, Colombia. This was achieved by direct observation of the consumption patterns of these animals. The capybaras only consumed plants, and their diet included 89 species of 22 families. Sixty three percent of these plant species had not been reported before. The most commonly consumed plants (94% of the diet), belonged to the Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Leguminosae and Pontederiaceae. Only seven species represented 60% of the total diet: the grasses Hymenachne amplexicaulis (16.9%), Digitaria bicornis (4.5%) and Panicum maximum (4.4%) and the Cyperaceae Rynchospora corymbosa (4.4%). There was seasonal variation in the diet composition of capybaras.

Dieta del capibara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris (Rodentia: Hydrochaeridae) en Caño Limón, Arauca, Colombia / Diet of the capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris (Rodentia: Hydrocharidae) in Caño Limón, Arauca, Colombia

We studied the composition and seasonal variation of the diet of the capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris) in the flooded savannas of Caño Limón, Colombia. This was achieved by direct observation of the consumption patterns of these animals. The capybaras only consumed plants, and their diet included 89 species of 22 families. Sixty three percent of these plant species had not been reported before. The most commonly consumed plants (94% of the diet), belonged to the Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Leguminosae and Pontederiaceae. Only seven species represented 60% of the total diet: the grasses Hymenachne amplexicaulis (16.9%), Digitaria bicornis (4.5%) and Panicum maximum (4.4%) and the Cyperaceae Rynchospora corymbosa (4.4%). There was seasonal variation in the diet composition of capybaras.