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Simple Summary: Trachycarpus nanus is a national, second-class, rare and endangered plant in China, and a plant species endemic to Yunnan. This species has a high medicinal, ecological, and scientific value, but it is currently on the verge of extinction. Therefore, it is urgent to learn its extinction risk under global warming. We predict its multi-temporal distribution pattern based on the optimized MaxEnt model. The results show that precipitation is the most important factor. In the future, drastic climatic changes and human disturbances may lead to the extinction of this species, so it is necessary to strengthen the protection of this species using specific strategies. Climate change affects the geographical distribution of plant species. Rare Trachycarpus nanus with a narrow distribution range, high medicinal value and extremely small population is facing increasing extinction risks under global climate change. In this study, 96 recorded occurrences and 23 environmental factors are used to predict the potential suitable area of T. nanus based on the optimized MaxEnt (3.4.4) model and ArcGIS (10.7) software. The results show that when the parameters are FC = LQ and RM = 1, the MaxEnt model is optimal and AUC = 0.946. The distribution patterns were predicted in the past, present, and four future phases, i.e., 2021–2040 (2030), 2041–2060 (2050), 2061–2080 (2070), and 2081–2100 (2090). The main factors are the annual precipitation (bio12), mean temperature of the coldest quarter (bio11), temperature seasonality (bio4), precipitation of the wettest quarter (bio16), and isothermality (bio3). The potential distribution of T. nanus is primarily concentrated in central Chuxiong, encompassing a total potential suitable area of 5.65 × 104 km2. In historical periods, the total habitat area is smaller than that in the present. In the future, the potential suitable area is generally increased. The centroid analysis shows that T. nanus will move to a high-altitude area and to the southeast. But its dispersal capacity may not keep up with the climate change rate. Therefore, additional protection sites for this species should be appropriately established and the habitat connectivity should be enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groups with morphological stasis are an interesting framework to address putative cryptic species that may be hidden behind traditional taxonomic treatments, particularly when distribution ranges suggest disjunct and environmentally heterogeneous biogeographic patterns. New hypotheses of delimitation of evolutionary independent units can lead to the identification of different biogeographic processes, laying the foundation to investigate their historical and ecological significance. Jasione is a plant genus with a distribution centered in the Mediterranean basin, characterized by significant morphological stasis. Within the western Mediterranean J. gr. crispa species complex, J. sessiliflora s.l. and allied taxa form a distinct group, occupying environmentally diverse regions. At least two ploidy levels, diploid and tetraploid, are known to occur in the group. The internal variability is assessed with phylogenetic tools, viz. GMYC and ASAP, for species delimitation. The results are compared with other lines of evidence, including morphology and cytology. The fitting of distribution patterns of the inferred entities to chorological subprovinces is also used as a biogeographical and environmental framework to test the species hypothesis. Despite the scarcity of diagnostic morphological characters in the group, phylogenetic delimitation supports the description of at least one cryptic species, a narrow endemic in the NE Iberian Peninsula. Moreover, the results support the segregation of a thermophilic group of populations in eastern Iberia from J. sessiliflora. Ploidy variation from a wide geographical survey supports the systematic rearrangement suggested by species delimitation. Taxonomic reorganization in J. sessiliflora s.l. would allow ecological interpretations of distribution patterns in great accordance with biogeographical regionalization at the subprovince level, supporting geobotanical boundaries as a framework to interpret species ecological coherence of cryptic lineages. These results suggest that species differentiation, together with geographic isolation and polyploidization, is associated with adaptation to different environments, shifting from more to less thermophilic conditions. Thus, the recognition of concealed evolutionary entities is essential to correctly interpret biogeographical patterns in regions with a complex geologic and evolutionary history, such as the Mediterranean basin, and biogeographical units emerge as biologically sound frameworks to test the species hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, comprises c. 2000 species whose evolutionary relationships at the tribal level have proven difficult to resolve, hindering our ability to understand their origin and diversification.We designed a specific probe kit for Scrophulariaceae, targeting 849 nuclear loci and obtaining plastid regions as by‐products. We sampled c. 87% of the genera described in the family and use the nuclear dataset to estimate evolutionary relationships, timing of diversification, and biogeographic patterns.Ten tribes, including two new tribes, Androyeae and Camptolomeae, are supported, and the phylogenetic positions of Androya, Camptoloma, and Phygelius are unveiled. Our study reveals a major diversification at c. 60 million yr ago in some Gondwanan landmasses, where two different lineages diversified, one of which gave rise to nearly 81% of extant species. A Southern African origin is estimated for most modern‐day tribes, with two exceptions, the American Leucophylleae, and the mainly Australian Myoporeae. The rapid mid‐Eocene diversification is aligned with geographic expansion within southern Africa in most tribes, followed by range expansion to tropical Africa and multiple dispersals out of Africa.Our robust phylogeny provides a framework for future studies aimed at understanding the role of macroevolutionary patterns and processes that generated Scrophulariaceae diversity. This article is part of the Special Collection 'Global plant diversity and distribution'. See https://www.newphytologist.org/global-plant-diversity for more details. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely documented that the complex structure of forest ecosystems supports considerable bryophyte species and functional diversity. In this study, we assessed the diversity, distribution and ecological and phytogeographical features of bryophytes across a gradient of temperate forest types on Mt. Papuk. This is the largest and highest mountain in the lowland, Pannonian part of Croatia, with high geological diversity and various temperate forests covering 95% of the mountain. According to the predominant tree species (oak vs. beech), geological bedrock (calcareous vs. siliceous) and soil reaction (alkaline vs. acidic), 21 study plots were classified into four distinct forest types. In all, 184 bryophyte species (35 liverworts and 149 mosses) were recorded. Although the forest types investigated did not differ significantly with respect to species richness, each was characterized by a considerable number of diagnostic bryophyte species. According to our results, one of the main ecological factors determining the variability of the forest bryophyte composition was geological bedrock and the associated soil reaction. Basiphilous forests developed on carbonate bedrock harbored more thermophilous and nitrophilous bryophytes and were characterized by southern-temperate and Mediterranean–Atlantic biogeographic elements. In contrast, acidophilous forests growing on silicate bedrock were characterized by wide-boreal and boreo-arctic–montane elements, i.e., bryophytes indicating cooler habitats and nitrogen-deficient soils. Based on the results, we hypothesized that the main latitudinal biogeographic distinction between southern and northern biogeographic elements is driven more by geological substrate than by the main tree species in forest communities. The present study confirmed previous findings that bryophytes are good and specific habitat indicators and show associations with different forest types, which can help to understand the complexity, ecological microconditions and biogeographic characteristics of forest communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presented work is the first comprehensive study on the desmids of mountainous areas of the Gorce region in Poland. The Gorce Mts flora of the order Desmidiales comprises 20 genera and 247 species. The most diverse genera in the Gorce Mts are Cosmarium with 99 taxa, Closterium with 39 taxa, Staurastrum with 38 taxa and Euastrum with 17 taxa. All reported taxa are described and documented by original hand drawings and microphotographs. Environmental data with geographical coordinates are included for all studied sites. Among the recorded taxa, eight (Actinotaenium borgeanum, Actinotaenium gelidum, Actinotaenium perminutum, Cosmarium alpestre, Cosmarium dispersum, Cosmarium paragranatoides, Closterium sublaterale, Staurastrum pyramidatum) are new for the Polish flora. An important factor affecting the biodiversity of desmids in the Gorce area is human activity. In typically anthropogenic habitats, which in the study area include roads and paths, 157 species were found (63.7% of the Gorce desmid flora). Many montane species, such as Closterium pusillum and Cosmarium decedens, associated with wet moss on rocks, had secondary habitats there. A group of 21 species found only in anthropogenic habitats can be considered anthropophytes of the studied area. There are also semi-natural habitats in the form of meadows that persist only due to human activity. The situation is similar to that of vascular plants. Clearings used until the 1980s showed significantly higher species richness than clearings where grazing has been abandoned for a long time. Overall, human activity has contributed to an increase of desmid species diversity in the Gorce region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Adab / Al-ādāb is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We analyzed plants and their traits in dolines, which are characteristic enclosed terrain depressions on carbonate (karst) plateaus. These landforms range from a few meters to over 100 m in diameter, their depth generally varying from a few meters to a few tens of meters. A pronounced ecological gradient can be found from the bottom to the top, starting from humid, cool and shaded bottoms to sunny, dry and warm slopes and tops. We sampled dolines of various depths and analyzed the distribution of plant species on the gradient and how this distribution is reflected in plant traits: chorotypes, life forms, plant architecture and strategies. We used the transect method and sampled the floristic composition from the doline bottom to the top. We collected information about plant traits from various literature sources. The results show life forms and plant architecture explain this gradient well and, to a lesser extent, also chorotypes, but functional strategies have a low explanatory power. Life forms and plant architecture are the result of adaptation of species to the environment, and chorotypes are defined as species with an overlapping geographical distribution pattern due to their distribution and environmental histories. Functional strategies, which have evolved to enable plants to succeed in various environments, unexpectedly have a low explanatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological strategy is the tactics employed by species in adapting to abiotic and biotic conditions. The ecological strategy spectrum is defined as the relative proportion of species in different ecological strategy types within a community. Determinants of ecological strategy spectrum of plant community explored by most previous studies are about abiotic factors. Yet, the roles of biotic factors in driving variations of ecological strategy spectra of forest communities across different geographic regions remains unknown. In this study, we established 200 0.04-ha forest dynamics plots (FDPs) and measured three-leaf functional traits of tree and shrub species in four forest vegetation types across four climatic zones. Based on Grime's competitor, stress-tolerator, ruderal (CSR) triangular framework, and the StrateFy method, we categorized species into four ecological strategy groups (i.e., C-, S-, Int-, and R-groups) and related the ecological spectra of the forests to three species diversity indices [i.e., species richness, Shannon-Wiener index, and stem density (stem abundance)]. Linear regression, redundancy analysis, and variance partition analysis were utilized for assessing the roles of species diversity in regulating ecological strategy spectra of forest communities across different climatic zones. We found that the proportion of species in the C- and Int-groups increased, while the proportion of species in the S-group decreased, with the increase of three indices of species diversity. Among the three species diversity indices, stem abundance played the most important role in driving variations in ecological strategy spectra of forests across different climatic zones. Our finding highlights the necessity of accounting for biotic factors, especially stem abundance, in modeling or predicting the geographical distributions of plant species with varied ecological adaptation strategies to future environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clustering methods based on environmental variables are useful in the planning of conservation strategies for species and ecosystems. However, there is a lack of work on the regionalization of the vast space of North Africa and the distribution of plant species. The current lists of endemic plants are focused mostly on an occurrence at the country level and not on regions with different conditions. The aim of this work was to lay out an environmental scheme for northwest Africa and to collect data about the occurrence of endemic plants in this area. Clustering with 12 of 33 tested environmental rasters was performed to divide the Maghreb into environmental clusters. Then, a list of 1618 endemic plant taxa (1243 species and 375 subspecies) was prepared and their distribution in estimated environmental clusters was examined. Eleven clusters with different conditions were estimated. The main drivers of regionalization were temperature amplitude, precipitation seasonality, and precipitation of the warmest quarter. According to the occurrence of endemic plants, northwest Africa may be divided into three zones: Atlas, Mediterranean (two environmental clusters), and southern zone (eight environmental clusters). The presented results provide a good basis for understanding the spatial patterns of the Maghreb, including its environment and species diversity. A designed list of endemic plant species together with environmental data may facilitate the planning of future research in north Africa and arranging methods of biodiversity protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understand the role of the drivers in vegetation pattern is essential in ecology since diversity plays a major role in the stability and maintenance of plant communities. The murundus are small and scattered earthmounds with a differentiated flora of its surrounding. In our study site (Campo Maior, Piauí, Northeastern Brazil), we classified them in three categories: presence of carnaúba (PC), presence of tucum (PT), and with the absence of palm trees (AP). Here, our goals were (1) to explore alpha diversity using the richness estimator and abundance distribution rank, expecting that palm trees could influence the richness of plant species on murundus; (2) analyzing the species richness-area relationship in the murundus, following the assumptions that the largest one holds more species; (3) find the changes in the species composition (beta diversity) between the three categories of murundus, assuming which the presence of palm trees influence the species composition; and (4) investigate if the distance between murundus is a decisive factor in the species composition, where the closest murundus are the most similar in species composition. Ours results showed that palms trees do not influence the richness of the murundus, the largest murundus are the richest ones, and the turnover predominantly determines beta diversity in the different murundus categories. Furthermore, the distance between the murundus did not determine its floristic similarity. Overall, we demonstrated which the species of palm trees are not the main drive of the plant assemblage in the murundus, however its size comprises a major factor in the richness, with great species substitution, which explains the high plant diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work aimed to treat and discuss the conceptualization of Biogeography, as one of the fields of study of Geography; of Phytogeography, sub-area of Biogeography, and of Phytosociology, as a sub-branch of Phytogeography, demonstrating the close connection between these and geographic science. As methodological processes consisted of literature review on the subject, document analysis on electronic sites, elaboration of a schema and explanatory table. The research points out that Physical Geography created subareas that aimed to understand natural phenomena in integral parts, Biogeography, for example, branched out into distinct parts such as Phytogeography and Phytosociology to understand the spatialization and organization of plant communities, and above all, characterize them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedback between plants and their associated soil biota is an important driver of plant distribution, abundance and community composition with consequences for ecosystem functioning. The field of plant‐soil feedback (PSF) research has become an integral subdiscipline of terrestrial ecosystem ecology, and in recent decades has rapidly evolved by deepening and broadening its scope.We review the major developments in the field, discuss methodological considerations and present a way forward for new approaches to PSF research that will lead to a more generalized and predictive understanding of PSFs. We illustrate that the field of PSF research has pursued multiple dimensions, including temporal scales, biogeographic perspectives, environmental context and the level of biological resolution.Plant‐soil feedbacks have been related to successional species turnover, but our inferences are often constrained by experimental time‐scales, and anthropogenic impacts can alter or disrupt the temporal interactions between plants and soil biota. Plant‐soil feedbacks also have been used to explain spatial patterns of plant recruitment, coexistence and diversity, and have increasingly been linked to the patterns of spread and abundance of non‐native and invasive plants.In recent years, more consideration also has been given to the sensitivity of PSF to environmental context, in particularly to gradients of resource availability and changing climatic conditions (including extreme events). Here, of particular interest are the differential responses of mutualistic and antagonistic soil biota. How plants interact with different groups of soil biota has further been predicted from species' phylogenetic relatedness and increasingly also from plant chemical and morphological shoot, root and litter traits.Synthesis. In moving the field forward, future PSF research should take a multidimensional approach by explicitly considering cross‐connections between dimensions, including, for example, spatio‐temporal variation in resource availability, and trait–environment relationships across taxonomic and functional groups of plants and soil organisms. This forward movement will be accelerated by further methodological advances utilizing new types of experiments in the laboratory and in the field, as well as establishing global collaborative networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morro Três Irmãos, in Terra Rica-PR, is located in the northwest of Paraná, under the Atlantic Forest in the interior, with the main physiognomy being the Semideciduous Seasonal Forest, with the presence of floristic elements typical of a vegetation enclave. The application of the phytosociological study in this area aims to analyze the most relevant characteristics of the area and its present conditions, using the technique of graphical representation of vegetation pyramids. The field survey was carried out according to the relevant methodology, generating a comparative analysis of the evolution of the vegetation in the area. The study resulted in qualitative and quantitative information located spatially and temporally, such as the abundance, frequency, dominance and diversity indices, in addition to the so-called species importance value, representing the vegetation of the vertically collected points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de la Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales is the property of Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Saxifragales is a morphologically and ecologically diverse clade of flowering plants with a cosmopolitan distribution. Although families and genera within the order exhibit classic biogeographical disjunctions, no studies to date have rigorously examined and described its historical biogeography. Here, we analyze the historical biogeography of Saxifragales by first generating a new chronogram for the order using a supermatrix approach, based on 61 loci from 251 representative members of Saxifragales. Our results suggest that Saxifragales originated in the early Albian approximately 107 Ma and diversified rapidly in the next 15 Ma, with all stem lineages of extant families present by the Campanian at approximately 75 Ma. The ancestral geographic range of the order is unclear, but ancestral range reconstructions point to an East Asian origin as the most tenable hypothesis. Ancestral ranges of the Haloragaceae/Crassulaceae clade suggest a strong signal for an Australasia origin for all families, and Saxifragaceae shows strong signal for bidirectional movement across the Asian-Alaskan land bridge during the Upper Cretaceous. Disjunct distributions are best explained by long-distance dispersal rather than vicariance, but we demonstrate that timing and directionality within particular disjunctions are similar within Saxifragales and consistent with results from distantly related angiosperm clades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]