unicate

English

Etymology

Back-formation from duplicate.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈjuːnɪkət/

Noun

unicate (plural unicates)

1. (botany, zoology) A biological specimen that has no duplicates.
   • 1986, John Dransfield, “A guide to collecting palms”, in Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, volume 73, number 1, page 167:

     Dead inflorescences and infructescences are well worth collecting if no fresh material is available or if fresh material is only sufficient for a unicate or one duplicate.

   • 2013, Aljos Farjon, Denis Filer, An Atlas of the World's Conifers: An Analysis of their Distribution, Biogeography, Diversity and Conservation Status, Koninklijke Brill, →ISBN, page 3:

     Each collection, which may be a unicate or several specimens as duplicates in several herbaria, constitutes a record in the Conifer Database.

2. (botany) A species that occurs at only a single geographical site.
   • 2011, Reynaldo Linares-Palomino, Ary T. Oliveira-Filho, R. Toby Pennington, “Neotropical Seasonally Dry Forests: Diversity, Endemism, and Biogeography of Woody Plants”, in Rodolfo Dirzo, Hillary S. Young, Harold A. Mooney, Gerardo Ceballos, editors, Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests: Ecology and Conservation, Washington: Island Press, →ISBN, page 8:

     Our data perhaps are more robust for analyzing patterns of endemism because some nuclei for which we have few inventories show high numbers of unicates (e.g., Caribbean, Mexico), and others for which we have sampled far more thoroughly show low numbers (e.g., Brejo and Peri-Caatinga). Though the percentage of unicate species varies widely from 1.9 to 77.5 percent, in general it is high, with 12 of 23 nuclei showing greater than 20 percent unicates, suggesting high endemism.