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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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...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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....
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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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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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Island biogeography theory and the habitat heterogeneity jointly explain global patterns of Rhododendron diversity
September 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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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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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...
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New insights into the phylogeny and infrageneric taxonomy of Saussurea based on hybrid capture phylogenomics (Hyb-Seq)
Available online 18 October 2024
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,...
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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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SSR markers development and their application in genetic diversity evaluation of garlic (Allium sativum) germplasm
September 2022
Garlic (Allium sativum), an asexually propagated vegetable and medicinal crop, has abundant genetic variation. Genetic diversity evaluation based on molecular markers has apparent advantages since their...
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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...
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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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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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Population genetic insights into the conservation of common walnut (Juglans regia) in Central Asia
September 2024
The common walnut (Juglans regia) is one of the most economically important nut trees cultivated worldwide. Despite its importance, no comprehensive evaluation of walnut tree population genetics has...
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Global patterns of taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity of flowering plants: Biodiversity hotspots and coldspots
May 2023
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....
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