ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Systematics and Evolution
Community evolution and phylogenetic structure of seed plants in Gansu, China
Provisionally accepted
- 1CAAS Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, China
- 2Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou, China
- 3Chinese Academy of Forestry Research Institute of Forestry, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Understanding plant diversity is essential for revealing how species adapt and evolve across heterogeneous environments. By integrating phylogenetics and ecology, we investigated species origins, evolutionary patterns, and biodiversity mechanisms. Using distribution data of seed plants in Gansu Province, China, we analyzed spatial patterns, phylogenetic diversity, community structure, and floristic relationships. Results show Gansu's seed flora has diverse temporal origins: 53.85% post-Miocene (0.3–23 Ma), 38.11% Paleogene (23.03–66 Ma), and 8.01% pre-Cretaceous (>66 Ma). The median diversification time is 19.61 Ma; the mean divergence time (MDT) is 28.17 ±25.65 Ma. Species richness (SR) and phylogenetic diversity (PD) are strongly correlated (P < 0.001), both showing a southeast-high to northwest-low pattern. SES-PD reveals phylogenetic overdispersion in 66 counties, suggesting migration corridors, while 14 southeastern counties show clustering due to environmental filtering. NRI and NTI analyses indicate competitive exclusion in 13 counties and environmental filtering in 55. These findings highlight the evolutionary complexity and spatial heterogeneity of Gansu's plant diversity, offering insights into the ecological and historical drivers shaping plant community assembly in arid and montane regions.
Keywords: community assembly, Environmental filtering, Gansu province, phylogenetic, spatio-temporal pattern
Received: 28 Aug 2025; Accepted: 28 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tian, Li, Zhou, Du, Song, Huang and Wei. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qing Tian
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.