Geographical patterns in phylogenetic diversity of Chinese woody plants and its application for conservation planning

Aim: Biodiversity hotspots are widely used as conservation priorities to preserve the tree of life. However, many conservation practices identify biodiversity hotspots without considering phylogenetic diversity (PD), which reflects total evolutionary history and feature diversity of a region. Moreover, conservation planning rarely distinguishes between neo- and paleo-biodiversity hotspots despite their differences. Here, we 1) estimated large-scale patterns in PD of woody plants, 2) identified neo- and paleo-biodiversity hotspots, and 3) demonstrated their implication in conservation planning, with special focus on Hengduan Mountains and southern China.

Location: China.

Methods: Distributions of 11,405 woody species from the Atlas of Woody Plants in China were updated, and were transformed into a grid of 50 × 50 km2. By integrating distribution maps with a genus-level phylogeny of angiosperms, we estimated Faith’s PD of each grid cell and evaluated the contribution of species rela...