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Wild potato relatives (Solanum L. sec. Petota) play a vital role in crop improvement, understanding crop evolution, and conserving potato diversity. However, these invaluable resources are often neglected and underutilized and are susceptible to threats such as climate change, urbanization, and agricultural expansion. Little is known about the diversity, conservation status, and distribution of wild potato species in Colombia. To address this gap, we assessed the conservation status of five wild potato relatives conserved in the ex situ Colombian Central Collection. Five species were analyzed for their spatial patterns of biodiversity, conservation status, and conservation gaps. Colombia was found to have six centers of species richness, four areas of endemism, and six biogeographical regions. Of the five native species, only one was classified as adequately conserved for ex situ conservation, while the other four were considered low priority. In contrast, for in situ conservation, three species showed high priority, one was classified as medium priority, and one as low priority. In light of these findings, we propose three conservation strategies: (1) conducting collection missions to increase accessions in the national germplasm bank, prioritizing high‐priority species; (2) identifying and protecting unprotected natural habitats and engaging stakeholders to enhance in situ conservation efforts; and (3) establishing regional community genebanks to ensure localized conservation efforts. Core Ideas: Biodiversity patterns of wild potato species and their conservation status in Colombia have been documented.The wild relatives of potato species in Colombia have been insufficiently sampled and remain unprotected.Herbarium and genebanks historical data play critical roles in conserving wild potato relatives.Insights for the ex situ and in situ conservation of wild potato relatives in Colombia are proposed.By utilizing historical data from genebanks, we recommended the inclusion of indigenous and agrobiodiversity zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Armed-conflicts often occur in tropical areas considered to be of high ‘conservation-value’, termed as such for their biodiversity or carbon-storage functions. Despite this important overlap, few studies have assessed how forest-biomass is affected by armed-conflicts. Thus, in this paper we develop a multinomial logit model to examine how outcomes of the interactions between carbon-storage, armed-conflict and deforestation rates are linked to social, institutional and economic factors. We use Colombia as a case study because of its protracted armed-conflict, high forest-cover, sustained deforestation rates and on-going peace processes. Our empirical results show that the impacts of armed-conflicts on forest-cover are connected to specific socio-economical processes, such as unequal land distribution and land-grabbing, which typically occurs as part of ‘agricultural colonization’. Findings address a research gap by providing statistically sound evidence for associations between armed-conflicts and land-related grievances, which has rarely been demonstrated empirically. Our results also suggest that forest commons are associated with reduced armed-conflict, and simultaneously provide contributions to carbon storage and to meeting basic needs. Moreover, our forest-conflict transition models provide useful visual means to capture and relay to policymakers-the causes of forest cover-changes in a conflict-affected country. Finally, our findings imply that in dedicating their efforts to resolving land-ownership disputes, the Colombian government might uphold their international climate change commitments via reducing deforestation and hence forest based carbon emissions, while pursuing their national security objective via undermining opportunities for guerrilla groups to operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The datasets and code presented in this article are related to the research article entitled "Comprehensiveness of conservation of useful wild plants: an operational indicator for biodiversity and sustainable development targets" 1 . The indicator methodology includes five main steps, each requiring and producing data, which are fully described and available here. These data include: species taxonomy, uses, and general geographic information (dataset 1); species occurrence data (dataset 2); global administrative areas data (dataset 3); eco-geographic predictors used in species distribution modeling (dataset 4); a world map raster file (dataset 5); species spatial distribution modeling outputs (dataset 6); ecoregion spatial data used in conservation analyses (dataset 7); protected area spatial data used in conservation analyses (dataset 8); and countries, sub-regions, and regions classifications data (dataset 9). These data are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/2jxj4k32m2.1. In combination with the openly accessible methodology code (https://github.com/CIAT-DAPA/UsefulPlants-Indicator), these data facilitate indicator assessments and serve as a baseline against which future calculations of the indicator can be measured. The data can also contribute to other species distribution modeling, ecological research, and conservation analysis purposes.