1 ECOSYSTEM SERVICES PROVIDED BY BROMELIAD PLANTS: A 2 SYSTEMATIC REVIEW 3 4 Geraldine Ladino Vásquez a,*, Fabiola Ospina-Bautista a, Jaime Vicente Estévez Varón 5 a, Lucie Jerabkovab, Pavel Kratina c 6 7 a Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad de Caldas, Street 65 No. 26 – 10, 8 Manizales, Caldas, 170004, Colombia. 9 b Department of Geography, King’s College London, 30 Aldwych, London WC2B 10 4GB, UK. 11 c School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile 12 End Rd, London E1 4NS, UK. 13 14 15 16 *Corresponding author 17 18 E-mail addresses:
[email protected] (G. Ladino-V), 19
[email protected] (F. Ospina-B),
[email protected] (J.V. 20 Estévez Varón),
[email protected] (L. Jerabkova),
[email protected] (P. 21 Kratina). 22 23 24 Keywords: Biodiversity; bromeliad plants; climate regulation; disease; ecosystem 25 services; microecosystems; Neotropics; pharmaceutical potential; water storage. 1 26 ABSTRACT 27 The unprecedented loss of biological diversity has negative impacts on ecosystems and 28 the associated benefits which they provide to humans. Bromeliads have high diversity 29 throughout the Neotropics, but they have been negatively affected by habitat loss and 30 fragmentation, climate change, herbivorous species invasions, and they are also being 31 commercialized for ornamental use. These plants provide direct benefits to the human 32 society and they also form micro ecosystems in which accumulated water and nutrients 33 support the communities of aquatic and terrestrial species, thus maintaining local 34 diversity. We performed a systematic review of the contribution of bromeliads to 35 ecosystem services across their native geographical distribution.