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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
Multifaceted plant diversity patterns across the Himalaya: Status and outlook
July 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
Plant diversity in Yunnan: Current status and future directions
August 2020
Yunnan, located in southwestern China, harbors more than 19,000 higher plants, which represents the highest plant diversity in the country. However, plant diversity in Yunnan faces enormous threats...
New insights into the molecular phylogeny and biogeographical history of Allium subgenus Melanocrommyum (Amaryllidaceae) based on plastome and nuclear sequences
July 2025
Subgenus Melanocrommyum is the second largest subgenus of Allium, with a wide distribution ranging from the Canary Islands to northwestern India. This study investigates the phylogeny, biogeographic...
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,...
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...
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...
Phylogenomic insights into Adenophora and its allies (Campanulaceae): Revisiting generic delimitation and hybridization dynamics
July 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...
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....
New insights into the phylogeny and infrageneric taxonomy of Saussurea based on hybrid capture phylogenomics (Hyb-Seq)
January 2025
Saussurea is one of the largest and most rapidly evolving genera within the Asteraceae, comprising approximately 520 species from the Northern Hemisphere. A comprehensive infrageneric classification,...
A complex interplay of genetic introgression and local adaptation during the evolutionary history of three closely related spruce species
July 2025
As climate change triggers unprecedented ecological shifts, it becomes imperative to understand the genetic underpinnings of species’ adaptability. Adaptive introgression significantly contributes to...
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,...
PlastidHub: An integrated analysis platform for plastid phylogenomics and comparative genomics
July 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...
Evaluating the utility of deep genome skimming for phylogenomic analyses: A case study in the species-rich genus Rhododendron
July 2025
Deep genome skimming (DGS) has emerged as a promising approach to recover orthologous nuclear genes for large-scale phylogenomic analyses. However, its reliability with low DNA quality and quantity...
U.Taxonstand: An R package for standardizing scientific names of plants and animals
January 2023
The scientific names of organisms are key identifiers of plants and animals. Correctly treating scientific names is a prerequisite for biodiversity research and documentation. Here, we present an R...
Genome analyses provide insights into Engelhardia’s adaptation to East Asia summer monsoon
September 2025
Genetic information has been instrumental in elucidating the relationship between the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) and subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests (EBLFs). However, how the genomic...