Key Laboratory of Plant Resources Conservation and Sustainable Utilization, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, China.
BMC Plant Biol. 2024 Feb 15;24(1):111. doi: 10.1186/s12870-024-04796-0.
The ephemeral flora of northern Xinjiang, China, plays an important role in the desert ecosystems. However, the evolutionary history of this flora remains unclear. To gain new insights into its origin and evolutionary dynamics, we comprehensively sampled ephemeral plants of Brassicaceae, one of the essential plant groups of the ephemeral flora.
We reconstructed a phylogenetic tree using plastid genomes and estimated their divergence times. Our results indicate that ephemeral species began to colonize the arid areas in north Xinjiang during the Early Miocene and there was a greater dispersal of ephemeral species from the surrounding areas into the ephemeral community of north Xinjiang during the Middle and Late Miocene, in contrast to the Early Miocene or Pliocene periods.
Our findings, together with previous studies, suggest that the ephemeral flora originated in the Early Miocene, and species assembly became rapid from the Middle Miocene onwards, possibly attributable to global climate changes and regional geological events.
中国北疆的短命植物在荒漠生态系统中发挥着重要作用，但它们的进化历史尚不清楚。为了更深入地了解其起源和进化动态，我们对短命植物中一个重要的植物类群——十字花科植物进行了全面采样。
我们使用质体基因组重建了系统发育树，并估算了它们的分歧时间。结果表明，短命物种在早中新世开始在北疆的干旱地区定殖，并且在中晚中新世，有更多的短命物种从周围地区扩散到北疆的短命植物群落中，而不是在早中新世或上新世时期。
我们的发现与之前的研究表明，短命植物起源于早中新世，从中新世中期开始，物种组装变得迅速，这可能归因于全球气候变化和区域地质事件。
