66 results match your criteria: "Research and Collections Center[Affiliation]"

Geographic patterns and climatic drivers of the mean genus age of liverworts in North America.

Plant Divers

November 2024

Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Zurich, Zurich 8008, Switzerland.

Phylogenetic niche conservatism posits that species tend to retain ancestral ecological traits and distributions, which has been broadly tested for lineages originating in tropical climates but has been rarely tested for lineages that originated and diversified in temperate climates. Liverworts are thought to originate in temperate climates. Mean lineage age reflects evolutionary history of biological communities.

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Strong evidence for latitudinal diversity gradient in mosses across the world.

Plant Divers

July 2024

Bryology Laboratory, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.

Species richness generally decreases with increasing latitude, a biodiversity gradient that has long been considered as one of the few laws in ecology. This latitudinal diversity gradient has been observed in many major groups of organisms. In plants, the latitudinal diversity gradient has been observed in vascular plants, angiosperms, ferns, and liverworts.

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Global patterns and ecological drivers of taxonomic and phylogenetic endemism in angiosperm genera.

Plant Divers

March 2024

Key Laboratory of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region's Eco-Environment, Ministry of Education, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400045, China.

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 distributions. Here, we investigated geographic patterns and ecological drivers of taxonomic and phylogenetic endemism of angiosperm genera across the world. We identify centers of paleo-endemism and neo-endemism of angiosperm genera, and show that they are mostly located in the Southern Hemisphere in tropical and subtropical regions, particularly in Asia and Australia.

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Evolutionary history shapes variation of wood density of tree species across the world.

Plant Divers

May 2024

Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Forest Resources and Silviculture, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China.

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 including 27,297 measurements of wood density from 2621 tree species worldwide, we test the hypothesis that the legacy of evolutionary history plays an important role in driving the variation of wood density among tree species. We assessed phylogenetic signal in different taxonomic (e.

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Background And Aims: Latitudinal diversity gradients have been intimately linked to the tropical niche conservatism hypothesis, which posits that there has been a strong filter due to the challenges faced by ancestral tropical lineages to adapt to low temperatures and colonize extra-tropical regions. In liverworts, species richness is higher towards the tropics, but the centres of diversity of the basal lineages are distributed across extra-tropical regions, pointing to the colonization of tropical regions by phylogenetically clustered assemblages of species of temperate origin. Here, we test this hypothesis through analyses of the relationship between macroclimatic variation and phylogenetic diversity in Chinese liverworts.

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The tendency of species to retain ancestral ecological distributions (phylogenetic niche conservatism) is thought to influence which species from a species pool can persist in a particular environment. Thus, investigating the relationships between measures of phylogenetic structure and environmental variables at a global scale can help understand the variation in species richness and phylogenetic structure in biological assemblages across the world. Here, we analyze a comprehensive data set including 341,846 species in 391 angiosperm floras worldwide to explore the relationships between measures of phylogenetic structure and environmental variables for angiosperms in regional floras across the world and for each of individual continental (biogeographic) regions.

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A male syntype of Somatochlora exuberata Bartenev, 1910, from Kavykuchi Gazimurskie village, Transbaikalia, Siberia, June 24 (in Julian Calendar, July 7 in Gregorian Calendar) 1909, was discovered in the Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

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Triatomine species (kissing bugs) infected with Trypanosoma cruzi are found across the southern United States. The northern limits of Trypanosoma cruzi infected kissing bugs are less understood. The objective of this work was to describe the locations of kissing bugs from Illinois and Missouri based on historical records, submissions to Texas A&M University's (TAMU) Kissing Bug Community Science Program and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and records from online platforms (iNaturalist, BugGuide, and GBIF) up to and including 2022.

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Although originating from a common Gondwanan flora, the diversity and composition of the floras of Africa and South America have greatly diverged since continental breakup of Africa from South America now having much higher plant species richness. However, the phylogenetic diversity of the floras and what this tells us about their evolution remained unexplored. We show that for a given species richness and considering land surface area, topography, and present-day climate, angiosperm phylogenetic diversity in South America is higher than in Africa.

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In eastern Asian subtropical forests, leaf habit shifts from evergreen to deciduous broad-leaved woody plants toward higher latitudes. This shift has been largely explained by the greater capacity of deciduous broad-leaved plants to respond to harsh climatic conditions (e.g.

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Geographic patterns of taxonomic and phylogenetic β-diversity of angiosperm genera in regional floras across the world.

Plant Divers

September 2023

Key Laboratory of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region's Eco-Environment, Ministry of Education, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400045, China.

Beta diversity (β-diversity) is the scalar between local (α) and regional (γ) diversity. Understanding geographic patterns of β-diversity is central to ecology, biogeography, and conservation biology. A full understanding of the origin and maintenance of geographic patterns of β-diversity requires exploring both taxonomic and phylogenetic β-diversity, as well as their respective turnover and nestedness components, and exploring phylogenetic β-diversity at different evolutionary depths.

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Invasive species may pose significant threats to biodiversity and ecosystem structure and functioning. The number of introduced species that have become invasive is substantial and is rapidly increasing. Identifying potentially invasive species and preventing their expansion are of critical importance in invasion ecology.

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Does regional species diversity resist biotic invasions?

Plant Divers

May 2023

Research Center of Global Change and Complex Ecosystems, Zhejiang Tiantong Forest Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.

The role of regional species diversity in large-scale species invasions has been largely controversial. On the one hand, it has been proposed that diversity may facilitate invasion ("diversity begets diversity") because regions with higher diversity may indicate favorable conditions for many more species. On the other hand, high diversity may indicate high levels of niche occupation, thus making it more difficult for new species to invade.

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Global patterns of taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity of flowering plants: Biodiversity hotspots and coldspots.

Plant Divers

May 2023

Center for Global Change and Complex Ecosystems, Zhejiang Tiantong Forest Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.

Species diversity of angiosperms (flowering plants) varies greatly among regions. Geographic patterns of variation in species diversity are shaped by the interplay of ecological and evolutionary processes. Here, using a comprehensive data set for regional angiosperm floras across the world, we show geographic patterns of taxonomic (species) diversity, phylogenetic diversity, phylogenetic dispersion, and phylogenetic deviation (i.

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U.PhyloMaker: An R package that can generate large phylogenetic trees for plants and animals.

Plant Divers

May 2023

Research and Collections Center, Illinois State Museum, 1011 East Ash Street, Springfield, IL 62703, USA.

The previously released packages of the PhyloMaker series (i.e. S.

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Geographic patterns of taxonomic and phylogenetic β-diversity of aquatic angiosperms in China.

Plant Divers

March 2023

Wuhan Botanical Garden/Core Botanical Gardens, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China.

China covers a vast territory harbouring a large number of aquatic plants. Although there are many studies on the β-diversity of total, herbaceous or woody plants in China and elsewhere, few studies have focused on aquatic plants. Here, we analyse a comprehensive data set of 889 aquatic angiosperm species in China, and explore the geographic patterns and climatic correlates of total taxonomic and phylogenetic β-diversity as well as their turnover and nestedness components.

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Patterns of phylogenetic relatedness of non-native plants across the introduction-naturalization-invasion continuum in China.

Plant Divers

March 2023

CAS Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650201, China.

Human activities have caused the exchange of species among different parts of the world. When introduced species become naturalized and invasive, they may cause great negative impacts on the environment and human societies, and pose significant threats to biodiversity and ecosystem structure. Knowledge on phylogenetic relatedness between native and non-native species and among non-native species at different stages of species invasion may help for better understanding the drivers of species invasion.

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Knowledge of which biological and functional traits have, or lack, phylogenetic signal in a particular group of organisms is important to understanding the formation and functioning of biological communities. Allometric biomass models reflecting tree growth characteristics are commonly used to predict forest biomass. However, few studies have examined whether model parameters are constrained by phylogeny.

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Global patterns and climatic determinants of phylogenetic structure of regional fern floras.

New Phytol

July 2023

Center for Global Change and Complex Ecosystems, Zhejiang Tiantong Forest Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China.

Knowledge of relationships between phylogenetic structure of a biological assemblage and ecological factors that drive the variation of phylogenetic structure among regions is crucial for understanding the causes of variation in taxonomic composition and richness among regions, but this knowledge is lacking for the global flora of ferns. Here, we fill this critical knowledge gap. We divided the globe into 392 geographic units on land, collated species lists of ferns for each geographic unit, and used different phylogenetic metrics (tip- vs basal-weighted) reflecting different evolutionary depths to quantify phylogenetic structure.

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U.Taxonstand: An R package for standardizing scientific names of plants and animals.

Plant Divers

January 2023

Research and Collections Center, Illinois State Museum, 1011 East Ash Street, Springfield, IL, 62703, USA.

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 package, 'U.

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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, which is now called 'V.

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There is a consensus that climate factors strongly influence species richness along elevation gradients, but which factors are crucial and how they operate are still elusive. Here, we assess the relative importance of temperature-related versus precipitation-related variables and the relative importance of extreme climate versus climate seasonality in driving pteridophyte species richness. We used correlation and regression analyses to relate species richness of pteridophytes, and their two major groups (lycophytes, ferns), in fifty 100-m vertical bands to climatic factors representing different aspects of climatic conditions (general climate, stressful climate, and climate seasonality).

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