Plant Diversity and Phytogeography in Forests

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2017) | Viewed by 9305

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Laboratory of Botany, Department of Biology, University of Patras, GR-26504 Patras, Greece
Interests: mapping and assessment of ecosystems and ecosystem services; biodiversity and ecosystem services; inventory and mapping of flora and habitat types/vegetation types; monitoring and conservation status assessment of habitats and species; conservation management of species and habitat types; conservation policy and national biodiversity strategy
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Dear Colleagues,

Forests are proven to be one of the richest (in plant diversity) ecosystems, while they simultaneously present high differentiations among types with the same dominant species. As stated in the Annex to Decision II/9 of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, “the biological diversity in forests results in high levels of adaptation, a feature of forest ecosystems which is an integral component of their biological diversity”. Nowadays, many species, even common ones, can be critically endangered, resulting severe disturbance within the forests’ plant communities and to the related ecological processes; thus, the maintenance of the ecological processes in forests is dependent upon the maintenance of their biological diversity, which can be translated to the maintenance of valuable Ecosystem Services, such as climate change regulation, water preservation and maintenance of valuable or potential important biological and genetic resources. With this call for papers, we invite researchers, stakeholders and scientists to contribute to this Special Issue, with studies from all fields, including field studies, statistical analyses, spatial distribution modeling and mapping. Our goal is to enhance the knowledge on forests’ plant diversity, species conservation status, their spatial distribution and the resulting phytogeographical relations, which can be proven as valuable indicators not only for understanding the biological processes and corridors in nature, but for providing important information for the human–forest interaction and for the challenge of the climate change tackling.

Dr. Panayotis Dimopoulos
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Climate change
  • Conservation status
  • Ecosystem Services
  • Forest communities
  • Forest species
  • Phyto-indicators
  • Plant distribution

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

6873 KiB  
Article
Genetic Differentiation and Population Genetic Structure of the Chinese Endemic Dipteronia Oliv. Revealed by cpDNA and AFLP Data
by Guoqing Bai, Tao Zhou, Xiao Zhang, Xiaodan Chen, Jia Yang, Zhonghu Li and Guifang Zhao
Forests 2017, 8(11), 424; https://doi.org/10.3390/f8110424 - 6 Nov 2017
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3796
Abstract
Dipteronia Oliv. is an endangered genus found in China with two species, D. sinensis and D. dyeriana. Previous morphological, cytogenetic, and molecular studies have suggested that D. dyeriana is a species related to D. sinensis. However, it is unclear how the [...] Read more.
Dipteronia Oliv. is an endangered genus found in China with two species, D. sinensis and D. dyeriana. Previous morphological, cytogenetic, and molecular studies have suggested that D. dyeriana is a species related to D. sinensis. However, it is unclear how the two species diverged and whether gene flow exists between these two species. Here, we performed a molecular study at the population level to characterize genetic differentiation and decipher the phylogeographic history for Dipteronia species based on newly sequenced chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) and amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) date retrieved from our previous studies. No haplotype was shared between the two species in the cpDNA network. However, the phylogenetic analysis suggested that a haplotype found in D. sinensis (H4) showed a closer relationship with haplotypes of D. dyeriana. Based on our estimated time of divergence, these two cpDNA haplotype lineages of Dipteronia diverged at about 31.19 Ma. Furthermore, two genetic clusters with asymmetric gene flow were supported based on the structure analysis, which corresponded with the two Dipteronia species, and we also detected a low level of asymmetric gene flow between these two species according to the MIGRATE analysis using AFLP data. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c.21 kya BP), the genus’ predicted distribution was more or less similar to that at present, which was also supported by the mismatch analyses that showed no population expansion of the two Dipteronia populations after the LGM. The combined cpDNA and AFLP data revealed significant genetic differentiation between the two Dipteronia species with asymmetric gene flow, which can be explained by the varying phylogeographical histories of these two species. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Diversity and Phytogeography in Forests)
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4528 KiB  
Article
Relationships between Plant Species Richness and Terrain in Middle Sub-Tropical Eastern China
by Chuangye Song and Mingchang Cao
Forests 2017, 8(9), 344; https://doi.org/10.3390/f8090344 - 14 Sep 2017
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4831
Abstract
The objective of this research was to study the relation between species richness and topography in the middle sub-tropical area of Eastern China. A species richness survey was conducted along altitude in Kaihua County, Zhejiang Province, Eastern China. Topographic variables, such as altitude, [...] Read more.
The objective of this research was to study the relation between species richness and topography in the middle sub-tropical area of Eastern China. A species richness survey was conducted along altitude in Kaihua County, Zhejiang Province, Eastern China. Topographic variables, such as altitude, slope, aspect, terrain roughness, relief degree and the topographical wetness index, were extracted from the digital elevation model. The Generalized Additive Model (GAM), the linear model and the quadratic model were used to fit response curves of species richness to topographic variables. The results indicated that altitude and the topographical wetness index have a significant relation to species richness. Species richness has a unimodal response to altitude and a linear response to the topographical wetness index. However, no significant correlations were observed between slope, aspect and species richness. The predicted species richness by GAM is significantly correlated with the observed species richness, whereas the prediction error tends to increase with the increment of species richness. This study furthered insights into the relationship between topography and plants’ diversity in the middle sub-tropical area of Eastern China. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Diversity and Phytogeography in Forests)
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