中国植物地理学研究进展与展望

Plant geography in China: History, progress and prospect

中国植物地理学从20世纪20年代初创到当前繁荣经历了100年的发展,近30年来测序技术和生物信息技术的进步,促进了分类、进化和生态等学科交叉融合,中国植物地理学在诸多方面取得了突破性进展,主要包括:①植物类群和区系在中国整体上按纬度、经度和海拔呈现出规律性;物种丰富度、系统发生多样性和特有性热点集中分布在南部山地,少数分布在北方山地和干旱地区。②关于大尺度植物多样性格局及形成机制,多数热带起源科的物种多样性格局受冬季低温的限制,而多数温带起源科的物种多样性格局由末次冰期以来的气候变化主导;中国山地植物和群落具有显著的垂直地带性和空间分布异质性,热量因子是中国高山植物区系地理分异的首要气候因子。③中国大多数现生被子植物属(约66%)是在中新世及其以后分化;500 mm年等降水线是中国植物区系年龄和植被分区最重要的分界线;中国植物区系、区系中的特征或关键类群的起源和多样化与青藏高原抬升和亚洲季风加强密切相关。未来,时间和空间的结合仍是植物地理学研究的主旋律,类群、群落和区系分化时间的估算及物种分布数据的分辨率是研究者关注的焦点,植物大数据的持续积累和完善将为学科发展提供强大动力和广阔前景。

It has been 100 years since the study of plant geography began in China, and the discipline is now thriving. Particularly as the sequencing and bioinformatics techniques developed in the last three decades, great achievements have been obtained with the interdisciplinary integration of taxonomy, evolution and ecology. These advances can be concluded into three aspects.(1) Plant taxa and flora, on the whole, show regular patterns along latitude, longitude, and altitude in China;the hotspots of species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and endemism are recognized mainly in mountainous areas in southern China, and some in mountainous or arid areas in northern China.(2) As for the large scale pattern and underlying mechanism of plant diversity, the species richness patterns of most tropical families are predicted by winter coldness, while those of the majority of temperate families are predicted by Quaternary climate change;mountain plants and communities are of significant vertical zonality and spatial heterogeneity, and the maximum temperature of the warmest month is the most important climatic factor that affects geographical deviation of alpine flora composition in China.(3) The majority of extant Chinese angiosperm genera(c. 66%) were diverged during or after the Miocene;the 500 mm isoline of annual precipitation in China is the most important boundary line for floral age and vegetation regionalization;the origin and diversification of flora and characteristic or key taxa in China are closely related with the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau(QTP) and the intensification of Asian monsoons. In the future,integration of space and time is still a hot topic of plant geographic studies, and more attention will be focused on the estimates of divergence time of taxa, communities, and flora and the resolution of distribution data. The rapid growth and improvement of botanical data can provide powerful support for research on plant geography in the future.