Historical species records offer an excellent opportunity to test the predictive ability of range forecasts under climate change, but researchers often consider that historical records are scarce and unreliable, besides the datasets collected by renowned naturalists. This study demonstrates the relevance of biodiversity records generated through citizen science initiatives generated outside the natural sciences academia.

Understanding the factors promoting species formation is a major task in evolutionary biology research. In this project, funded by the Severo Ochoa-EBD microproject initiative, we have studied the evolutionary history of the six putative species included within the Californian scrub white oak species complex (genus Quercus).