AOBPreview originally published online on August 31, 2006
Annals of Botany 2006 98(5):1073-1084; doi:10.1093/aob/mcl192
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Phytogeographical Analysis of Seed Plant Genera in China
1 Research and Collections Center, Illinois State Museum 1011 East Ash Street, Springfield, IL 62703, USA
2 Center for Forest Ecology and Forestry Eco-engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang, Liaoning 110016, China
3 Department of Ecology, College of Environmental Sciences, Peking University Beijing 100871, China
4 School of Life Sciences, Sun Yatsen University Guangzhou 510275, China
5 Research Center of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100093, China
6 Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H1, Canada
7 Research Center of Plant Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation, Institute of Botany Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
*For correspondence. E-mail hqian{at}museum.state.il.us
Received: 16 May 2006 Returned for revision: 14 June 2006 Accepted: 25 July 2006 Published electronically: 31 August 2006
• Background and Aims A central goal of biogeography and ecology is to uncover and understand distributional patterns of organisms. China has long been a focus of attention because of its rich biota, especially with respect to plants. Using 290 floras from across China, this paper quantitatively characterizes the composition of floristic elements at multiple scales (i.e. national, provincial and local), and explores the extent to which climatic and geographical factors associated with each flora can jointly and independently explain the variation in floristic elements in local floras.
• Methods A study was made of 261 local floras, 28 province-level floras and one national-level flora across China. Genera of seed plants in each flora were assigned to 14 floristic elements according to their worldwide geographical distributions. The composition of floristic elements was related to climatic and geographical factors.
• Key Results and Conclusions Variations in percentages of cosmopolitan, tropical and temperate genera among local floras tend to be greater at higher latitudes than at lower latitudes. Latitude is strongly correlated with the proportions of 13 of the 14 floristic elements. Correlations of the proportions of floristic elements with longitude are much weaker than those with latitude. Climate represented by the first principal component of a principal component analysis was strongly correlated with the proportions of floristic elements in local floras (|r| = 0·75 ± 0·18). Geographical coordinates independently explained about four times as much variation in floristic elements as did climate. Further research is necessary to examine the roles of water–energy dynamics, geology, soils, biotic interactions, and historical factors such as land connections between continents in the past and at present in creating observed floristic patterns.
Key words: Biogeography, climate, floristics, latitudinal gradient, regionalization, seed plants
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