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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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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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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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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Evolutionary history shapes variation of wood density of tree species across the world
May 2024
The effect of evolutionary history on wood density variation may play an important role in shaping variation in wood density, but this has largely not been tested. Using a comprehensive global dataset...
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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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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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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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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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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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Conservation genomics provides insights into genetic resilience and adaptation of the endangered Chinese hazelnut, Corylus chinensis
May 2024
Global climate change has increased concerns regarding biodiversity loss. However, many key conservation issues still required further research, including demographic history, deleterious mutation load,...
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A review of ethnobotanical studies reveals over 500 medicinal plants in Mindanao, Philippines
Available online 15 May 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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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...
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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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Multi-omics analyses provide insights into the evolutionary history and the synthesis of medicinal components of the Chinese wingnut
May 2024
Chinese wingnut (Pterocarya stenoptera) is a medicinally and economically important tree species within the family Juglandaceae. However, the lack of high-quality reference genome has hindered its in-depth...
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Flower morphology of Allium (Amaryllidaceae) and its systematic significance
January 2024
Allium is a complicated genus that includes approximately 1000 species. Although its morphology is well studied, the taxonomic importance of many morphological traits, including floral traits, are poorly...
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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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Comprehensive integration of single-cell transcriptomic data illuminates the regulatory network architecture of plant cell fate specification
May 2024
Plant morphogenesis relies on precise gene expression programs at the proper time and position which is orchestrated by transcription factors (TFs) in intricate regulatory networks in a cell-type specific...
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Island biogeography theory and the habitat heterogeneity jointly explain global patterns of Rhododendron diversity
Available online 3 April 2024
Mountain biodiversity is of great importance to biogeography and ecology. However, it is unclear what ecological and evolutionary processes best explain the generation and maintenance of its high levels...
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Plastid phylogenomics provides new insights into the systematics, diversification, and biogeography of Cymbidium (Orchidaceae)
July 2024
Cymbidium (Orchidaceae: Epidendroideae), with around 60 species, is widely-distributed across Southeast Asia, providing a nice system for studying the processes that underlie patterns of biodiversity...
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Genetic analyses of ancient tea trees provide insights into the breeding history and dissemination of Chinese Assam tea (Camellia sinensis var. assamica)
March 2024
Chinese Assam tea (Camellia sinensis var. assamica) is an important tea crop with a long history of cultivation in Yunnan, China. Despite its potential value as a genetic resource, its genetic diversity...
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Woody plant taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity decrease along elevational gradients in Andean tropical montane forests: Environmental filtering and arrival of temperate taxa
July 2024
Mountains are paramount for exploring biodiversity patterns due to the mosaic of topographies and climates encompassed over short distances. Biodiversity research has traditionally focused on taxonomic...
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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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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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