Hotspot analyses indicate significant conservation gaps for evergreen broadleaved woody plants in China

Yue Xu,Jihong Huang,Zehao Shen,Runguo Zang,Lingxiao Ying,Youxu Jiang,Zhiheng Wang

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-02098-0

Abstract

Evergreen broadleaved woody plants (EBWPs) are dominant components in forests and savanna of the global tropic and subtropic regions. Southern China possesses the largest continuous area of subtropical EBWPs distribution, harboring a high proportion of endemic species. Hotspot and gap analyses are effective methods for analyzing the spatial pattern of biodiversity and conservation and were used here for EBWPs in China. Based on a distribution data set of 6,265 EBWPs with a spatial resolution of 50 × 50 km, we measured diversity of EBWPs in China using four indices: species richness, corrected weighted endemism, relative phylogenetic diversity, and phylogenetic endemism. According to the results based on 10% threshold, 15.73% of China’s land area was identified as hotspots using at least one diversity index. Only 2.14% of China’s land area was identified as hotspots for EBWPs by all four metrics simultaneously. Most of the hotspots locate in southern mountains. Moreover, we found substantial conservation gaps for Chinese EBWPs. Only 25.43% of the hotspots are covered by existing nature reserves by more than 10% of their area. We suggest to promote the establishment and management of nature reserve system within the hotspot gaps.

Highlights

Evergreen broadleaved woody plants (EBWPs) widely distribute over the world, and dominate in major types of forests, shrubs and savanna in tropical and subtropical regions[1], supporting the persistence of other biodiversity components in great quantity
Along with the climate warming in the last decades, the number and frequency of evergreen broadleaved species have been repeatedly observed to increase in the temperate forests in Europe, indicating that the detected climatic change might favors EBWPs3–5
It should be mentioned that some areas with relatively low SR for EBWPs, such as Qinling Mountains, had a higher PDrel, which reflected the distant phylogenetic relationships between the species in these regions (Fig. 1c)

Summary

Introduction

Evergreen broadleaved woody plants (EBWPs) widely distribute over the world, and dominate in major types of forests, shrubs and savanna in tropical and subtropical regions[1], supporting the persistence of other biodiversity components in great quantity. Most of the 35 global hotspots are distributed in tropical and subtropical regions dominated by EBWPs2, indicating the critical role of EBWPs in biodiversity conservation. In China, studies on the priority areas or hotspots for plant diversity have gradually increased, limited by data source, early results were more based on higher taxonomic units (e.g. genus or family)[17,18,19], or restricted to endemic or threatened species[20,21,22]. A growing numbers of diversity indices are used in ecological studies, but it is not clear whether these different indices agree on the pattern of biodiversity hotspots[16]

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Conclusion