Knowledge gaps in demographic, spatial, and biological characteristics of Canadian at-risk plant species

There are gaps in abundance, distribution, and biological information for many at-risk species, likely because of surveying difficulties. I outline these gaps for Canadian plant species and also suggest species-specific traits that hint at which species are difficult to assess in the field, therefore making them more likely to report missing data. A metaanalysis of COSEWIC listed plant species revealed that only 103 (60%) species had available status reports in 2013. Furthermore, 20% of those species had at least one missing population. Fifty-eight percent of missing information was attributable to missing abundance estimates, 24% percent to geographical information, and 18% to biological information. Finally, a Poisson distribution ANCOVA revealed no significant differences between species reporting uncertain populations and species not reporting such populations, nor in the amount of missing data they reported, with respect to any of the traits identified as potential indicators of surveying difficulty.