Taxonomic estimates of climbing plants in India: how many species are out there?

We present the first-ever attempt to estimate the taxonomic diversity of climbing plants in India, following the recent APG IV classification. We used more than 100 published and unpublished sources spanning more than a century to compile the extensive list of climbers. Our study revealed that the climbing plants in India are phylogenetically diverse, representing 2624 species radiated across 585 genera and 104 spermatophyte plant families. About two-thirds of the total climbers enumerated from the present study are lianas. Scramblers, in particular, are exclusively woody, unlike twiners and tendril climbers. The diversity of climbing mechanisms varied significantly across the 104 climber families. We also present the revised list of global climbing plant families, adding significantly to the existing dataset. We found that the climber diversity data collected exclusively from the ecological inventories or the taxonomic records underestimated the actual climber diversity by a significant margin. We discuss some of the key constraints in developing a climber database and recommend a replicable model, integrating ecology and taxonomy-based enumerations for the most precise estimate of climber diversity within a defined geographical area. The baseline data generated through our research will find applications in many ecological, taxonomic, phylogenetic, and evolutionary studies on climbers.