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...
Dissecting mitogenomic conflict to illuminate angiosperm deep phylogeny: Sequence and architectural evidence
Available online 25 October 2025
Deep relationships in the angiosperm tree of life remain highly controversial. To address this, we first assembled the complete mitochondrial genomes for Ceratophyllum demersum and Chloranthus sessilifolius,...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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,...
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...
The first complete plastid genome of Burmannia disticha L. from the mycoheterotrophic monocot family Burmanniaceae
October 2018
Burmanniaceae is one major group within the monocot order Dioscoreales that has not had its plastome sequenced. Members of Burmanniaceae are mostly achlorophyllous, although the genus Burmannia also...
Evaluating the relative importance of phylogeny and predictors in phylogenetic generalized linear models using the phylolm.hp R package
September 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....
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...
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,...
ddRAD sequencing of 1076 Camellia accessions reveals the genetic diversity and population introgression of the tea plant in China
Available online 11 September 2025
The tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is a widely cultivated and economically significant crop that originated from southwestern China. Owing to its high heterozygosity and complex genetic diversity, the...
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...
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....
Chromosome-level genome assembly and population genomics analysis of Camellia rubituberculata provide insights into adaptation to karst habitats
Available online 11 September 2025
Karst flora confined to isolated ‘habitat islands’ evolve specialized adaptations and unique traits, serving as ideal models for investigating adaptive evolution and species diversification mechanisms....
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...
The tropical-subtropical evergreen forest transition in East Asia: An exploration
August 2020
The transition from tropical to subtropical (warm temperate) evergreen forests is more clearly apparent in East Asia, from Nepal to the western Pacific coast, than elsewhere in the tropics. We review...
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...