Brazil’s bryophyte records come together—and reveal gaps in the map

Brazil’s mosses, liverworts and hornworts have a substantial documentary history, but their records are scattered across collections and databases. A new compilation brings more than 100,000 occurrence records into a national framework, offering a clearer view of both documented diversity and gaps in collecting coverage.

The study, posted on bioRxiv on November 3, 2026, is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Led by Jailton Venilson Ferreira da Silva, with colleagues at the Federal University of Pernambuco and State University of Piauí, it describes specimen records spanning 1804–2025. Its contribution is data integration, not an experimental test of what determines bryophyte diversity.

Connecting names with places

The authors distinguish between a taxonomic checklist and an occurrence database. Flora e Funga do Brasil supplies the country’s official framework of accepted species names, but was not designed to integrate primary records with coordinates, dates and collector information. Those details are needed to investigate where species have been collected and how documentation varies across space and time.

The team used the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, or GBIF, as its main source, adding Brazilian collections available through speciesLink. It also incorporated field collections from the Caatinga and records from the State University of Piauí’s cryptogamic herbarium, which the paper says is not indexed on online biodiversity platforms.

Curation included manually removing specimens duplicated between platforms, checking coordinates against recorded localities, and standardizing names using a bryophyte nomenclatural database. The methods describe retaining specimens identified or collected by bryophyte specialists and excluding uncertain names or questionable records. Collection dates and other metadata were preserved where available.

These procedures address identification and data-quality problems. They do not, however, make historical collecting effort geographically uniform.

A strong Atlantic Forest signal

The main results report 54,237 occurrence records and 1,523 species for the Atlantic Forest, the highest totals among the six biomes examined. The Amazon follows with 18,560 records and 1,054 species. Recorded richness is lower in the Cerrado, with 810 species, and Caatinga, with 671, followed by the Pampa with 269 and Pantanal with 61.

Record numbers and species richness are different measures. The Caatinga, for example, has more records than the Cerrado but fewer recorded species. Neither measure alone establishes how completely a biome has been surveyed.

The geographic pattern also carries a collecting-history signal. Records concentrate in the Atlantic Forest and coastal areas of the Southeast and South, while the Pantanal, Pampa and parts of the northern interior have lower record densities. The authors interpret the patterns as reflecting ecological differences alongside historical sampling biases; the compilation does not isolate their respective contributions.

Mosses account for the largest reported species total, followed by liverworts and hornworts. Among liverwort families, Lejeuneaceae is particularly prominent, with 335 species in the main results.

More records are not evidence of ecological recovery

The paper reports a sharp expansion in documented occurrences after 1950, with more than 45,000 records assigned to 2001–2025. The authors suggest that increased surveying, more specialists, stronger collections and herbarium digitization helped produce that pattern.

That is an interpretation of documentation history, not evidence that wild bryophyte populations increased. Likewise, lower recorded species totals in some biomes during the latest interval do not establish biodiversity loss. Sampling differences, taxonomic revisions and incomplete digitization can affect comparisons. The time intervals also differ in length, complicating direct comparisons of their totals.

Totals and access need clarification

Several internal discrepancies remain. The main description reports 1,820 species, matching the sum of its three group totals, while another abstract passage gives 1,821 and the variable table lists 1,835. The headline occurrence count is 102,528, but the table states 102,527. These figures need reconciliation before users treat them as definitive.

The higher species total relative to the official checklist’s cited 1,618 also should not be read as evidence of newly discovered species: the manuscript does not provide a species-by-species reconciliation explaining that difference.

Access is another unresolved point. Although the abstract describes an openly accessible database, the supplied manuscript leaves repository links and deposit identifiers incomplete and elsewhere refers to future archiving. It therefore does not establish a usable public download location.

The compilation could support distribution modeling, conservation assessments and better-targeted fieldwork. Those are prospective applications, not outcomes demonstrated here. Its immediate value is bringing dispersed evidence together—provided that users account for sampling gaps and the authors resolve the outstanding reporting and access issues.