Draft genome of Castanopsis chinensis, a dominant species safeguarding biodiversity in subtropical broadleaved evergreen forests.

Objectives: Castanopsis is the third largest genus in the Fagaceae family and is essentially tropical or subtropical in origin. The species in this genus are mainly canopy-dominant trees, and the key components of evergreen broadleaved forests play a crucial role in the maintenance of local biodiversity. Castanopsis chinensis, distributed from South China to Vietnam, is a representative species.

A DNA barcode library for woody plants in tropical and subtropical China.

The application of DNA barcoding has been significantly limited by the scarcity of reliable specimens and inadequate coverage and replication across all species. The deficiency of DNA barcode reference coverage is particularly striking for highly biodiverse subtropical and tropical regions. In this study, we present a comprehensive barcode library for woody plants in tropical and subtropical China.

Diversity and biogeography of plant phyllosphere bacteria are governed by latitude-dependent mechanisms.

Predicting and managing the structure and function of plant microbiomes requires quantitative understanding of community assembly and predictive models of spatial distributions at broad geographic scales. Here, we quantified the relative contribution of abiotic and biotic factors to the assembly of phyllosphere bacterial communities, and developed spatial distribution models for keystone bacterial taxa along a latitudinal gradient, by analyzing 16S rRNA gene sequences from 1453 leaf samples taken from 329 plant species in China. We demonstrated a latitudinal gradient in phyllosphere bacterial diversity and community composition, which was mostly explained by climate and host plant factors.

Plastome-based phylogeny improves community phylogenetics of subtropical forests in China.

Phylogenetic trees have been extensively used in community ecology. However, how the phylogeny construction affects ecological inferences is poorly understood. In this study, we constructed three different types of phylogenetic trees (a synthetic-tree generated using V.

The complete chloroplast genome sequence of .

is an important hardwood species and its seeds are popular as decorative jewelry. Currently, this species is threatened in the natural forests due to habitat destruction. Here, we first report the chloroplast genome of for future studies in ecology, phylogeny, and conservation.

Spatial patterns and associations between species belonging to four genera of the Lauraceae family.

Spatial distribution pattern of biological related species present unique opportunities and challenges to explain species coexistence. In this study, we explored the spatial distributions and associations among congeneric species at both the species and genus levels to explain their coexistence through examining the similarities and differences at these two levels. We first used DNA and cluster analysis to confirmed the relative relationship of eight species within a 20 ha subtropical forest in southern China.

Which models are appropriate for six subtropical forests: species-area and species-abundance models.

The species-area relationship is one of the most important topic in the study of species diversity, conservation biology and landscape ecology. The species-area relationship curves describe the increase of species number with increasing area, and have been modeled by various equations. In this paper, we used detailed data from six 1-ha subtropical forest communities to fit three species-area relationship models.

Different relationships between temporal phylogenetic turnover and phylogenetic similarity and in two forests were detected by a new null model.

Background: Ecologists have been monitoring community dynamics with the purpose of understanding the rates and causes of community change. However, there is a lack of monitoring of community dynamics from the perspective of phylogeny.

Methods/principle Findings: We attempted to understand temporal phylogenetic turnover in a 50 ha tropical forest (Barro Colorado Island, BCI) and a 20 ha subtropical forest (Dinghushan in southern China, DHS).

Exploring tree-habitat associations in a Chinese subtropical forest plot using a molecular phylogeny generated from DNA barcode loci.

Elucidating the ecological mechanisms underlying community assembly in subtropical forests remains a central challenge for ecologists. The assembly of species into communities can be due to interspecific differences in habitat associations, and there is increasing evidence that these associations may have an underlying phylogenetic structure in contemporary terrestrial communities. In other words, by examining the degree to which closely related species prefer similar habitats and the degree to which they co-occur, ecologists are able to infer the mechanisms underlying community assembly.