Global advances in phylogeny, taxonomy and biogeography of Lauraceae
May 2025
Over the past two decades, our understanding of Lauraceae, a large family of woody plants, has undergone significant advances in phylogeny, taxonomy, and biogeography. Molecular systematic studies have...
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Evaluating the relative importance of phylogeny and predictors in phylogenetic generalized linear models using the phylolm.hp R package
Available online 12 June 2025
Comparative analyses in ecology and evolution often face the challenge of controlling for the effects of shared ancestry (phylogeny) from those of ecological or trait-based predictors on species traits....
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PlastidHub: An integrated analysis platform for plastid phylogenomics and comparative genomics
Available online 22 May 2025
The plastid genome (plastome) represents an indispensable molecular resource for studying plant phylogeny and evolution. Although plastome size is much smaller than that of nuclear genomes, accurately...
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Multifaceted plant diversity patterns across the Himalaya: Status and outlook
Available online 12 April 2025
Mountains serve as exceptional natural laboratories for studying biodiversity due to their heterogeneous landforms and climatic zones. The Himalaya, a global biodiversity hotspot, hosts rich endemic...
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Global patterns and ecological drivers of taxonomic and phylogenetic endemism in angiosperm genera
March 2024
Endemism of lineages lies at the core of understanding variation in community composition among geographic regions because it reflects how speciation, extinction, and dispersal have influenced current...
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Pollinator diversity benefits natural and agricultural ecosystems, environmental health, and human welfare
September 2022
Biodiversity loss during the Anthropocene is a serious ecological challenge. Pollinators are important vectors that provide multiple essential ecosystem services but are declining rapidly in this changing...
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Heterogeneous occurrence of evergreen broad-leaved forests in East Asia: Evidence from plant fossils
January 2025
Evergreen broad-leaved forests (EBLFs) are widely distributed in East Asia and play a vital role in ecosystem stability. The occurrence of these forests in East Asia has been a subject of debate across...
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Phylogenomic insights into Adenophora and its allies (Campanulaceae): Revisiting generic delimitation and hybridization dynamics
Available online 27 May 2025
Hybridization and introgression have long obscured relationships within Adenophora and its relatives, complicating generic delimitation. Leveraging deep genome skimming (DGS) data, we generated a large...
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How to fill the biodiversity data gap: Is it better to invest in fieldwork or curation?
January 2024
Data gaps and biases are two important issues that affect the quality of biodiversity information and downstream results. Understanding how best to fill existing gaps and account for biases is necessary...
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Recent advances on phylogenomics of gymnosperms and a new classification
July 2022
Living gymnosperms comprise four major groups: cycads, Ginkgo, conifers, and gnetophytes. Relationships among/within these lineages have not been fully resolved. Next generation sequencing has made...
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Evaluating the relative importance of predictors in Generalized Additive Models using the gam.hp R package
July 2024
Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) are widely employed in ecological research, serving as a powerful tool for ecologists to explore complex nonlinear relationships between a response variable and predictors....
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Physiological diversity of orchids
August 2018
The Orchidaceae is a diverse and wide spread family of flowering plants that are of great value in ornamental, medical, conservation, and evolutionary research. The broad diversity in morphology, growth...
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A review of ethnobotanical studies reveals over 500 medicinal plants in Mindanao, Philippines
September 2024
Medicinal plants have long been used to treat various diseases in both indigenous and non-indigenous populations of Mindanao, Philippines. Here, we extracted data from ethnobotanical studies to compile...
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Plant diversity in a changing world: Status, trends, and conservation needs
February 2016
The conservation of plants has not generated the sense of urgency—or the funding—that drives the conservation of animals, although plants are far more important for us. There are an estimated 500,000...
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Ethiopian vegetation types, climate and topography
August 2020
Ethiopia is land of geographical contrasts with elevations that range from 125 m below sea level in the Danakil Depression to 4533 m above sea level in the Semien Mountains, a world heritage site. The...
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Maintaining biodiversity will define our long-term success
August 2020
Human beings are not only a part of our planet's ecosystems, but also, they are massively overusing them. This makes ecosystem protection, including biodiversity preservation, vital for humanity's future....
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Spatio-temporal variation of water salinity in mangroves revealed by continuous monitoring and its relationship to floristic diversity
January 2024
Salinity is among the most critical factors limiting the growth and species distribution of coastal plants. Water salinity in estuarine ecosystems varies temporally and spatially, but the variation...
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The role of botanical gardens in scientific research, conservation, and citizen science
August 2018
Plant diversity is currently being lost at an unprecedented rate, resulting in an associated decrease in ecosystem services. About a third of the world's vascular plant species face the threat of extinction...
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V.PhyloMaker2: An updated and enlarged R package that can generate very large phylogenies for vascular plants
July 2022
An earlier version of V.PhyloMaker has been broadly used to generate phylogenetic trees of vascular plants for botanical, biogeographical and ecological studies. Here, we update and enlarge this package,...
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Progress in systematics and biogeography of Orchidaceae
July 2024
Orchidaceae are one of the largest families of angiosperms in terms of species richness. In the last decade, numerous studies have delved into reconstructing the phylogenetic framework of Orchidaceae,...
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U.PhyloMaker: An R package that can generate large phylogenetic trees for plants and animals
May 2023
The previously released packages of the PhyloMaker series (i.e. S.PhyloMaker, V.PhyloMaker, and V.PhyloMaker2) have been broadly used to generate phylogenetic trees for ecological and biogeographical...
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Safeguarding our future by protecting biodiversity
August 2020
The Anthropocene is marked by twin crises: climate change and biodiversity loss. Climate change has tended to dominate the headlines, reflecting, in part, the greater complexity of the biodiversity...
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Phylogeny, character evolution, and classification of Selaginellaceae (lycophytes)
November 2023
Selaginella is the largest and most taxonomically complex genus in lycophytes. The fact that over 750 species are currently treated in a single genus makes Selaginellales/Selaginellaceae unique in pteridophytes....
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Environmental drivers of herbaceous plant diversity in the understory community of a warm-temperate forest
March 2025
Herbaceous plants are an essential component of forest diversity and driver of ecosystem processes. However, because the growth forms and life-history strategies of herbaceous plants differ from those...
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Genomic introgression underlies environmental adaptation in three species of Chinese wingnuts, Pterocarya
May 2025
Intraspecific genetic variance and gene flow can support the adaptive evolution of species challenged by climate shifts or novel environmental conditions. Less well understood is how genome organization...
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