# Sticky  Plant Selection for Biotopes - Using GBIF & Other Resources to Find Sympatric Species



## Bunsincunsin

Initially, what drew me to vivaria were the small, fragile-looking frogs of the Dendrobatidae, with their extraordinary colors and exquisite calls – to learn that they could be kept and maintained in the comfort of my home was unthinkable, and I immediately began to research their required care. Admittedly, most never get past this initial stage of vivaria interaction – setting up and maintaining an environment suitable to sustaining the basic needs of these frogs - yet, at some point, my fascination grew to encompass not only these organisms and their basic care, but also their natural habitat and the plethora of species that are found locally, along side them. Biotopes are the pinnacle of vivarium construction, if I may be so brash to suggest such a thing. They create context where it is otherwise devoid. To me, they represent an effort to better emulate the optimal conditions in which the chosen inhabitants originate.

Creating a biotope, however, also requires a significant amount of time researching and cross-referencing species, in addition to hardscape design and selection. If you’ve had the opportunity to visit the natural habitat of some of these frogs, you’ve probably come away enamored with visions of recreating a corner of an idyllic forest setting after seeing it first-hand – you’ve probably also amassed a collection of digital images to aid in doing so. For the rest of us, who have not yet had the chance to visit these places, we must rely on other resources to gather in-situ images, wander through field notes in publications, or wade through species occurrence databases to achieve what we’re after. It’s this latter avenue that this post aims to highlight – using a species database to piece together a plant list in order to create a biotope vivarium.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility – or GBIF – is an online database that allows open access to data of worldwide species occurrences. Data is contributed by various institutions, such as botanical gardens, research organizations, and universities, and made publicly searchable by GBIF. It is organized by species and can easily be searched by scientific name, geographic location, date of collection/observation, elevation, etc. GBIF is particularly useful as a biotope resource as it allows users to easily search for multiple species simultaneously and conveniently displays occurrences geographically.

The following guide will give a step-by-step outline for creating a list of biotopically accurate plant species for a given vivarium inhabitant.


*Getting Started*

Start by navigating to the GBIF Home Page, where you are given the option to search for ‘occurrences’, ‘species’, ‘datasets’, ‘publishers’, or ‘resources’. I recommend searching under ‘species’ to start, but you can also search under ‘occurrences’ if you are unsure of where your species of interest is found.









I will be using _Phyllobates vittatus_ as the species of interest for this example, however, you can start with any species imaginable and the same basic process will apply. It is important to note that GBIF datasets will likely not make distinctions between the various morphs within a species that we are familiar with (i.e. many _Ranitomeya _species), so you will either need to know the locality of your particular morph of frog, or just go with the species occurrences given.

Click on ‘species’ at the search box – you will be taken to another screen where you can enter your species of interest. Hit enter and you will be given a list of results. Occasionally, there will be more than one result for a given species, if this is the case for your species, select which ever result is listed as an accepted species.









You will be taken to the species page with a map of the occurrences and information relating to which datasets it appears in, IUCN ratings, etc. At this point, the map on this page is our main area of interest.









Various tools on the map allow the user to refine occurrences by basis of record, change the appearance, and define geometric boundaries. To get started, I would primarily recommend changing the style (shown as the paint roller icon) to ‘custom’ by defining base map as ‘roads’, binning as ‘small squares’, and colors as ‘classic,’ as shown.


















Next, zoom in on the map to where the clusters of occurrences are the most dense. With the base map set as ‘roads’, major towns should be visible and are often a good place to start if you know that your species of interest is found nearby. Occasionally, outlier occurrence points will show – these can be false observations or even preserved specimens that have been recorded ex-situ – which should be disregarded. When in doubt, it’s always good to cross-reference the native range of your species of interest with a resource such as AmphibiaWeb (https://amphibiaweb.org) or similar. In this case, I know _P. vittatus_ is found on the Osa peninsula of Costa Rica, so I will zero in there.









Once you’ve zeroed in on your location of interest, click ‘explore area’ at the bottom right corner of the map.









Now you are presented with every occurrence point for your species of interest as defined by the map boundaries that were set previously. You can confirm the boundaries set by navigating to the ‘map’ tab at the top of the list where you can also make adjustments to include/exclude any points you may have missed.


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## Bunsincunsin

_...continued_
​*Creating a Multi-Species Search*

On the left-hand column of the list, you are given options to display ‘simple’ or ‘advanced’ search fields - select ‘advanced’ to show all fields. Scroll down and click on ‘scientific name’, where a new search box will appear. Here, you can search for sympatric plant species found alongside your species of interest within the same geographic area.









You might consider starting out by searching with plant family names if you aren’t too familiar with genus-level plant names. I’ve created a short list of plant family names for plants commonly used in neotropical vivaria:

Araceae – aroids, includes _Anthurium_, _Philodendron_, etc.
Begoniacea – _Begonia spp._
Bromeliaceae – bromeliads, includes _Neoregelia_, _Tillandsia_, etc.
Ericaceae – includes neotropical bluberries
Gesneriaceae – gesneriads, includes _Episcia_, _Pearcea_, etc.
Melastomacea – melastomes, includes _Bertolonia_, _Triolena_, etc.
Orchidaceae - orchids
Piperacea – _Piper_ and _Peperomia spp._
Solanaceae – includes _Solanum spp._
Urticacea – includes _Pilea spp._
And many more… You can view a complete list of plant families here: The Plant List - Plant Families

On the other hand, searching for plant families can result in way too many search occurrences at once, and so genus-level searches are also highly recommended.

Here, I’ve decided to see what _Philodendron_ species are found to be sympatric to _P. vittatus_. At this point, you may also choose to uncheck the box next to your species of interest so that you will only be viewing plant names/occurrences.









With the results given, I was able to narrow down this short list of _Philodendron_ species that are both sympatric to _P. vittatus_ and are readily available to your average hobbyist:

_Philodendron grandipes_
_Philodendron inaequilaterum_
_Philodendron tripartitum_

The easiest way to view the diversity of species for a given genera search is by viewing the ‘species’ tab in the left-hand column. Here you can see the complete list of species found for a given search, shown as a taxonomic list, along side the total number of occurrences within the database for that specific location. It’s important to note, you’re better off selecting species that have a higher number of occurrences within your location search, as those species will have a higher likelihood of actually being found alongside your species of interest.









*Refining Searches by Elevation*

If you rely solely on the geographic boundaries to dictate which species show up in a search, there will often be a wide range of habitats included. Species are often restricted by geological formations and elevation. Simply going off of the occurrences in a given geographic area could result in the inclusion of species that are not necessarily sympatric to the species of interest. To remedy this, a search query can be taken one step further and be defined by elevation boundaries.

Here, it is once again important to cross-reference the natural range of your species of interest with another resource. According to AmphibiaWeb.org, _P. vittatus_ are found between 20m and 550m above sea level. By setting the elevation boundary on the GBIF search to be between these values, I can get a better estimate of the actual plant species one could find alongside these frogs.








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I was initially given a total of 653 results, but with the elevation boundary set, the number of results went down to 486. This tool can be especially useful for refining searches when looking at locations that are in or around mountainous regions – it can be the difference between the inclusion of cloud-forest plant species for a lowland frog species biotope and a more accurate representation that includes only lowland plant species.









Further searching for additional genera, with the elevation boundaries defined as above, results in this well-rounded plant list for a _Phyllobates vittatus_ biotope vivarium:

_Anathallis lewisiae_
_Anthurium gracile_
_Anthurium pentaphyllum_
_Asplenium fragrans_
_Behonia fischeri_
_Begonia hirsuta_
_Chamaedorea pumila_
_Dicranopygium harlingii_
_Drymonia serrulata_
_Episcia lilacina_
_Kohleria allenii_
_Maxillaria uncata_
_Microgramma percussa_
_Microgramma reptans_
_Peperomia rotundifolia_
_Peperomia serpens_
_Philodendron grandipes_
_Philodendron inaequilaterum_
_Philodendron tripartitum_
_Specklinia grobyi_
_Trichosalpinx orbicularis_
_Weruahia marnier-lapostollei_


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## Bunsincunsin

_...continued_​*Some Notes on Biotopes & Other Resources*

It is inevitable that creating a list of biotopically-accurate plant species using this technique may not actually be as accurate as we would hope. Without seeing these habitats first-hand, it is impossible to know for sure which species are typically found alongside these frogs. However, I believe this technique will be sufficient for our purposes.

In some cases, it may be difficult or impossible to acquire the plant species generated by one of these searches – some species may be listed as unidentified, while others may not exist at all in the plant trade outside their natural habitat. In certain cases, it may be necessary to use a surrogate species that superficially looks similar to one that might be found alongside the species of interest. I still believe other hobbyists and collectors remain the best resource for acquiring difficult to find plant species, but there have been an increasing number of retail sources popping up over the last few years that specialize in rare plant sales, making acquiring some of these species a little easier (though, undoubtedly, more expensive.)

In theory, more plantings of fewer species tends to appear more natural in the smaller spaces that are typical of our vivaria. Consider groupings of multiple plants from the same species as opposed to one planting of a plethora of species. It is important to also consider the growth-habit of each species and to refrain from including too many species with similar growth-habits. Contrasting leaf sizes, shapes, textures and colors are also important to keep in mind when designing for an aesthetically pleasing display.

Aside from AmphibiaWeb, Dendrobates.org is another resource with frog species accounts. This resource focuses primarily on _Ameerega_ and _Ranitomeya_ species, and gives some information on where species are naturally found.

Dendrobase.de is another resource that features frog species accounts, and while not in english, it can easily be viewed in english through Google Translate. The species accounts here often include in-situ habitat images that are a great reference for biotope design.

Another image-based resource that I have been particularly fond of in the past is Flickr, for its ease of use and its large collection of user-contributed images. This resource can yield high-quality habitat images for many species and localities when using the right keywords in a search.

Lastly, biotope design and construction is a very time-consuming process that involves a decent amount of research and planning. I think this may be evident in the lack of biotope-oriented vivarium builds that one might often see shared on various forums, social media platforms, and image-based searches. While I have always leaned toward biotope vivarium design, I have yet to create what I would consider a ‘true’ biotope. It takes quite a bit of dedication and personal restraint not to include every last species of plant that one finds intriguing!


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## Bunsincunsin

I was contacted recently by another member to create a guide to using GBIF for generating biotope plant lists after suggesting this resource in another thread. Interestingly, I had initially written up a similar guide for doing just this a few years ago, however this ended up being just before GBIF updated their website with a _major_ overhaul to the user interface, which rendered the guide and most of the screenshots useless. In any case, here it finally is...

I admit, this topic may not be applicable to everyone, but hopefully, those with an interest in biotopes will find this resource useful in generating a plant list for their display, and perhaps those who are not yet aware or interested in biotopes may have their interest sparked and be exposed to a slightly different approach to vivarium construction and design. I think the GBIF user interface is fairly straight-forward, but it can be a bit overwhelming to new eyes. Hopefully this guide will help to provide some clarity for those getting started.


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## jibby

Thank you for sharing this resource! I have been trying to research orchids and aroids native to a specific area of Peru, and this will help so much.


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## Purist

This is a fantastic resource. I started using it today. Thank you for sharing it.


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