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Phylogenetic signals in the realized climate niches of Chinese grasses (Poaceae)

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Abstract

Explaining relationships between species richness and biogeographical patterns over a broad geographic scale is a central issue of biogeography and macroecology. We document the realized climate niches for grasses in China’s nature reserves and discuss its formation mechanism using grass richness data combined with climatic, physiological, and phylogenetic data. Our results suggest that climate niche structure of grasses is phylogenetically conservative for BEP (Bambusoideae, Ehrhartoideae, and Pooideae) and PACMAD (Panicoideae, Arundinoideae, Chloridoideae, Micrairoideae, Aristidoideae, and Danthonioideae) clades along temperature gradients and for Chloridoideae and Panicoideae along precipitation gradients. At the national scale, the divergence patterns of climate niches between two major clades are more distinguishable than between C3 and C4 grasses. High rates of climate niche evolution are found in C4 clades in the subtropical forest region. There appears to be a strong association between elevation gradients and grass diversity: the specific environmental conditions (e.g. energy) and the rapid shifts of climate conditions drive high grass diversification. Evolutionary conservatism of climate niches may be influenced by the specific adaptive ability to changing environmental conditions within NAD-ME/NADP-ME clades. Our results indicate that adaptations to major climate changes may be accomplished by C4 grass nodes of high climate niche evolutionary rates in China’s nature reserves.

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Acknowledgments

We thank China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System for accessing the digital climatic data. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30700043), the Key Laboratory of Plant Resources Conservation and Sustainable Utilization, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 200922), the Chinese Government Scholarship to QL (No. 2008491004), and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-EW-J-28). We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that improved the manuscript.

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  1. Key Laboratory of Plant Resources Conservation and Sustainable Utilization, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

    Qing Liu & Xue-jun Ge

  2. Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 20013, USA

    Paul M. Peterson

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  1. Qing Liu
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Correspondence to Qing Liu or Xue-jun Ge.

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Liu, Q., Peterson, P.M. & Ge, Xj. Phylogenetic signals in the realized climate niches of Chinese grasses (Poaceae). Plant Ecol 212, 1733–1746 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-011-9946-7

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