Lang Li

• Associate professor at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden

Over the past two decades, our understanding of Lauraceae, a large family of woody plants, has undergone significant advances in phylogeny, taxonomy, and biogeography. Molecular systematic studies have elucidated the basic relationships within the family with plastid phylogenomic analyses providing robust support for deep-level relationships betwee...

Climate change is widely recognized as a major threat to biodiversity and a critical factor contributing to the decline in species and populations. However, it remains uncertain whether species from continental and island environments, especially endangered ones, will respond similarly or differently to climate change. The strategies employed by th...

Hainan Island in southern China is situated within the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, and has attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists, geologists, and biogeographers. However, the palaeogeography of Hainan Island and its relationship with mainland China remains contested. In this paper, we report RAD-seq data for Engelhardia roxburghia...

Beilschmiedia mengwangensis, a new species of Beilschmiedia (Lauraceae) from Yunnan Province, Southwest China, is here described and illustrated based on morphological and phylogenetic evidence. The new species is morphologically similar and phylogeneti-cally closely related to Beilschmiedia brachythyrsa. However, it can be distinguished from Beils...

Species delimitation remains a challenge worldwide, especially in highly diverse tropical and subtropical regions. Here, we use an integrative approach that combines morphology, phylogenomics, and species distribution modeling (SDM) to clarify the cryptic differentiation within the enigmatic hemiparasitic love vine Cassytha filiformis (Lauraceae) i...

Species in transitional areas often display adaptive responses to climate change and such areas may be crucial for long-term biodiversity conservation. Evaluation of spatial multidimensional biodiversity patterns and the identification of biodiversity hotspots and priority conservation areas may help mitigate the effects of climate change. Here, we...

Engelhardia a genus of Juglandaceae (the walnut family), is endemic to tropical and subtropical Asia. The rich Cenozoic fossil records and distinctive morphological characters of the living plants have been used to explore the evolutionary history and geographic distribution of Juglandaceae. However, the taxonomy of this genus has been suffered fro...

The complexity of global biodiversity in the tropical Indochina Peninsula and subtropical China bioregions has fascinated biologists for decades, but little is known about the spatiotemporal patterns in these regions. Accordingly, the aims of the present study were to investigate the evolutionary and distribution patterns of Engelhardia in these re...

The aim of DNA barcoding is to enable fast and accurate species identification. However, universal plant DNA barcodes often do not provide species-level discrimination, especially in taxonomically complex groups. Here we use Lauraceae for the design and evaluation of DNA barcoding strategies, considering: (1) the efficacy of taxon-specific DNA barc...

The aim of DNA barcoding is to enable fast and accurate species identification. However, universal plant DNA barcodes often do not provide species-level discrimination, especially in taxonomically complex groups. Here we use Lauraceae for the design and evaluation of DNA barcoding strategies, considering: (1) the efficacy of taxon-specific DNA barc...

Using DNA barcoding for species identification remains challenging for many plant groups. New sequencing approaches such as complete plastid genome sequencing may provide some increased power and practical benefits for species identification beyond standard plant DNA barcodes. We undertook a case study comparing standard DNA barcoding to plastid ge...

Understanding the role of climate changes and geography as drivers of population divergence and speciation is a long‐standing goal of evolutionary biology and can inform conservation. In this study, we used restriction site‐associated DNA sequencing (RAD‐seq) to evaluate genetic diversity, population structure, and infer demographic history of the...

The gene cox1 is one of the most reported mitochondrial genes involved in horizontal gene transfer among angiosperms. However, whether different cox1 copies exist in different populations of a species and whether any other novel way except intron homing exists for cox1 intron acquisition is less understood. In this study, we chose Cassytha filiform...

Alseodaphnopsis maguanensis and A. putaoensis , two new species of Alseodaphnopsis (Lauraceae) from southwestern China (Yunnan Province) and northern Myanmar (Kachin State), are here described and illustrated based on both morphological and molecular evidence. They are morphologically similar to Alseodaphnopsis rugosa and phylogenetically closely r...

Climate refugia are locations where plants are able to survive periods of regionally adverse climate. Such refugia may affect evolutionary processes and the maintenance of biodiversity. Numerous refugia have been identified in the context of Quater-nary climate oscillations. With climate warming, there is an increasing need to apply insights from t...

Climate refugia are locations where plants are able to survive periods of regionally adverse climate. Such refugia may affect evolutionary processes and the maintenance of biodiversity. Numerous refugia have been identified in the context of Quater-nary climate oscillations. With climate warming, there is an increasing need to apply insights from t...

Species delimitation is fundamental to conservation and sustainable use of economically important forest tree species. However, the delimitation of two highly valued gold-thread nanmu species (Phoebe bournei (Hemsl.) Yang and P. zhennan S. K. Lee & F. N. Wei) has been confusing and debated. To address this problem, we integrated morphology and rest...

Biodiversity managements are always hot topics in China that harbors so much hyper-biodiversity. However, biodiversity loss is continuing as economic growth is accelerating during recent decades. Questions that need to be addressed with regard to the conflict between biodiversity conservation and economic growth are: how much conservation effort is...

Mirabilis himalaica (Nyctaginaceae) is endemic to the Himalayas where it is used in traditional Tibetan folk medicine and is the only Old World representative of a large New World genus. The systematic position of M. himalaica and historical biogeography of Mirabilis and related genera was evaluated using two loci (nrITS, rps16), with divergence ti...

Species delimitation is fundamental to conservation and sustainable use of economically important forest tree species. However, the delimitation of two highly valued gold‐thread nanmu species (Phoebe bourneiand P. zhennan) has been confusing and debated. To address this problem, we integrated morphology and restriction site‐associated DNA sequencin...

An investigation of a questionable species of the genus Alseodaphne led to the discovery of a new genus Alseodaphnopsis H. W. Li & J. Li, gen. nov., separated from Alseodaphne Nees, and a new species Alseodaphnopsis ximengensis H. W. Li & J. Li, sp. nov., endemic to Yunnan province, China. This new species is characterized by having big, axillary,...

Bayesian consensus tree based on LEAFY intron II sequence dataset. Bootstrap values (≥ 50%) / Bayesian posterior probabilities (≥ 95%) are shown above branches. ● = both bootstrap value and Bayesian posterior probability 100%. (PDF)

Size of inflorescence. The data of inflorescence are gathered in the relevant literatures below the table, except for A. ximengensis H. W. Li et J. Li and A. sp. NP. (DOCX)

Shape and size (diam.) of fruit. The data of fruit are gathered in the relevant literatures below the table, except for A. ximengensis H. W. Li et J. Li and A. sp. NP. (DOCX)

Voucher information and GenBenk accessions for ITS and LFY sequences for species examined in this study. Sequences starting with AY, FM, FJ, and HQ come from work of Li et al. (unpublished), Rohwer et al. (2009), Chen et al (2009), and Li et al. (2011) respectively. (DOCX)

Bayesian consensus tree based on ITS sequence dataset. Bootstrap values (≥ 50%) / Bayesian posterior probabilities (≥ 95%) are shown above branches. ● = both bootstrap value and Bayesian posterior probability 100%. (PDF)

Neighbor-Joining (NJ) tree generated using matK sequences. Erroneous identifications which recognized based on matK marker at the genus and species levels are marked by stars. (TIFF)

The systems and reaction processes of the PCR amplification protocols used for barcoding. (DOCX)

Taxa, voucher specimens, the locations and geographic coordinates in this study. (XLSX)

Summary of the sequence recovery of five DNA barcode regions and GenBank accession numbers. (DOCX)

Neighbor-Joining (NJ) tree generated using rbcL sequences. Erroneous identifications which recognized based on rbcL marker at the genus and species levels are marked by stars. (TIFF)

Lauraceae are an important component of tropical and subtropical forests and have major ecological and economic significance. Owing to lack of clear-cut morphological differences between genera and species, this family is an ideal case for testing the efficacy of DNA barcoding in the identification and discrimination of species and genera. In this...

Caryodaphnopsis is a small genus of the Lauraceae. It contains 16 known species with a disjunct tropical amphi-Pacific distribution; 8 species in tropical Asia and 8 species in tropical America. In the present study, RPB2, LEAFY and ITS sequences of 9 Caryodaphnopsis species and 22 other Lauraceae species were analyzed with maximum parsimony and Ba...

Low copy nuclear genes show great potential to provide phylogenetic information, but their use has been hampered by several inherent adverse factors. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-mediated recombination ranks among these factors and occurs when high levels of similar paralogs for a low-copy nuclear gene coexist within a single PCR amplification r...

• The Persea group (Lauraceae) has a tropical and subtropical amphi-pacific disjunct distribution with most of its members, and it includes two Macaronesian species. The relationships within the group are still controversial, and its intercontinental disjunction has not been investigated with extensive sampling and precise time dating. • ITS and LE...

Phylogenetic analyses of Isodon and related genera using the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (nrITS), cpDNA regions (trnL-trnF region and rps16 intron), and morphological data are presented. The results clarify the relationships among Isodon and its putative related genera and the question of the monophyly of Isodon and its relationsh...

Nuclear DNA ITS and ETS sequences of 71 representatives from nine genera and 11 sections of the core Laureae were combined with a matrix of morphological characters, analyzed using maximum parsimony with both equally and successively weighted characters, and analyzed for Bayesian inference, minimum evolution by neighbor joining, and maximum likelih...