Science Enabled by Specimen Data

Xue, T., S. R. Gadagkar, T. P. Albright, X. Yang, J. Li, C. Xia, J. Wu, and S. Yu. 2021. Prioritizing conservation of biodiversity in an alpine region: Distribution pattern and conservation status of seed plants in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Global Ecology and Conservation 32: e01885. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01885

The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) harbors abundant and diverse plant life owing to its high habitat heterogeneity. However, the distribution pattern of biodiversity hotspots and their conservation status remain unclear. Based on 148,283 high-resolution occurrence coordinates of 13,450 seed plants, w…

Roalson, E. H., and W. R. Roberts. 2016. Distinct Processes Drive Diversification in Different Clades of Gesneriaceae. Systematic Biology 65: 662–684. https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syw012

Using a time-calibrated phylogenetic hypothesis including 768 Gesneriaceae species (out of ~~ 3300 species) and more than 29,000 aligned bases from 26 gene regions, we test Gesneriaceae for diversification rate shifts and the possible proximal drivers of these shifts: geographic distributions, growt…

Tan, K., T. Lu, and M.-X. Ren. 2020. Biogeography and evolution of Asian Gesneriaceae based on updated taxonomy. PhytoKeys 157: 7–26. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.157.34032

Based on an updated taxonomy of Gesneriaceae, the biogeography and evolution of the Asian Gesneriaceae are outlined and discussed. Most of the Asian Gesneriaceae belongs to Didymocarpoideae, except Titanotrichum was recently moved into Gesnerioideae. Most basal taxa of the Asian Gesneriaceae are fou…

Peyre, G., J. Lenoir, D. N. Karger, M. Gomez, A. Gonzalez, O. Broennimann, and A. Guisan. 2020. The fate of páramo plant assemblages in the sky islands of the northern Andes B. Jiménez‐Alfaro [ed.],. Journal of Vegetation Science 31: 967–980. https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.12898

Aims: Assessing climate change impacts on biodiversity is a main scientific challenge, especially in the tropics, therefore, we predicted the future of plant species and communities on the unique páramo sky islands. We implemented the Spatially Explicit Species Assemblage Modelling framework, by i) …

Nevado, B., E. L. Y. Wong, O. G. Osborne, and D. A. Filatov. 2019. Adaptive Evolution Is Common in Rapid Evolutionary Radiations. Current Biology 29: 3081-3086.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.07.059

One of the most long-standing and important mysteries in evolutionary biology is why biological diversity is so unevenly distributed across space and taxonomic lineages. Nowhere is this disparity more evident than in the multitude of rapid evolutionary radiations found on oceanic islands and mountai…