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Biases in assessing the evolutionary history of the angiosperm flora of China
Author(s) -
Qian Hong
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of biogeography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 158
eISSN - 1365-2699
pISSN - 0305-0270
DOI - 10.1111/jbi.13530
Subject(s) - flora (microbiology) , phylogenetic tree , phylogenetics , biology , paleontology , divergence (linguistics) , china , late miocene , evolutionary biology , zoology , geography , archaeology , bacteria , biochemistry , linguistics , philosophy , structural basin , gene
In their recent paper published in Nature (2018, 554, 234‐238), Lu et al. use phylogenetic approaches to determine the proportion of the Chinese angiosperm genera that originated during the Miocene or later, and contrast divergence times and phylogenetic dispersion between eastern and western China. One of their key conclusions is that 66% of the angiosperm genera in China originated in the Miocene or later. However, an analysis of 300 angiosperm genera shows that 139 (76.8%) of the 181 genera considered as originating in the Miocene or later by Lu et al. have fossil records before the Miocene. Thus, the evolutionary history of Chinese angiosperm flora has been substantially underestimated in Lu et al. In addition, the results of Lu et al. have been biased by using an incomplete phylogeny.