An updated Chinese vascular plant tree of life: Phylogenetic diversity hotspots revisited

Abstract

Large‐scale phylogenies provide a framework for interdisciplinary investigations in taxonomy, evolutionary biology, biogeography, ecology, and conservation. Integration of regional tree of life and species distribution data has greatly promoted spatial phylogenetic studies on biodiversity, floristic assembly, and biogeographic regionalization. In this study, we updated the phylogenetic tree of Chinese vascular plants by integrating data from public databases and sequences newly generated by our laboratory, to facilitate the exploration of floristic and ecological questions at a country scale. A phylogenetic tree with 15 092 tips and 14 878 species was obtained, including 13 663 species (44.0%) and 2953 genera (95.7%) native to China. Only two families (Corsiaceae and Mitrastemonaceae) and 133 genera native to China are not sampled in this study. Low proportion of sampling is detected in orders with high species diversity and those with low species diversity. The Hengduan Mountains, plus the western Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and western Xinjiang, show the greatest gap of target molecular data for angiosperms. Our phylogeny of Chinese vascular plants recovers relationships among and within major lineages that are highly congruent with published phylogenies at a broader scale. Most families (98.7%) are supported as monophyletic, and 573 genera (17.9%) are recognized as non‐monophyletic. Finally, hotspots of phylogenetic diversity for the Chinese angiosperms at both the genus and species levels are identified based on our phylogram, implicating conservation priorities for phylogenetic diversity. The updated phylogeny of Chinese vascular plants is publically available to generate subtrees through our automated phylogeny assembly tool SoTree in the DarwinTree platform (http://www.darwintree.cn/flora-sotree-v2/index.shtml).

Distinct Responses of Leaf Traits to Environment and Phylogeny Between Herbaceous and Woody Angiosperm Species in China

“…A phylogenetic tree was constructed based on the published phylogenetic tree of Chinese vascular plants developed by Chen et al (2016) and updated by Hu et al (2020) . As the largest and most up-to-date species-level phylogeny of Chinese vascular plants, this phylogeny was based on sequences of chloroplast and mitochondrial genes and covered 95.7% of genera native to China.…”

In memory of Professor Tang Yan‐Cheng: New perspectives in systematic and evolutionary biology

“…Such studies enable simultaneous study of morphologically distinguishing characteristics for resolved clades in the phylogeny (Willis et al, 2017). All three studies (Hu et al, 2020;Su et al, 2020;Ye et al, 2020) clarified previous taxonomic debates in these taxa and enabled the authors to propose revised taxonomic treatments based on a large amount of molecular phylogenetic data. Furthermore, the phylogeny of Magnolia, in particular, provides a comprehensive framework that may prove useful in breeding programs in this horticulturally important genus.…”

“…In this issue, Hu et al (2020) present a study updating the tree of life of the vascular plants of China to the species level, using the genus-level tree from a previous study as the framework (Chen et al, 2016). On the updated phylogeny, Hu et al (2020) evaluated the taxonomic systems of Chinese vascular plants and listed the nonmonophyletic genera that require further investigation. They further explored phylogenetic diversity hot spots at both the genus and species levels and compared the results with previous studies.…”

Taxonomic study of some species of the subfamily Dipsacoideae Eaton (Caprifoliaceae) by phenolic acid profiles

“…Phylogeny has widespread advantages in interdisciplinary studies including taxonomy, evolutionary biology, biogeography, ecology, conservation and even medicine (9,10). Relatively little phylogenetic work has focused on Dipsacoideae.…”