Yu-Fei Wang

Yu-Fei Wang
Chinese Academy of Sciences | CAS · Institute of Botany

PhD

About

119
Publications
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Introduction
I am currently studying on the plant evolution and their response to the climate changes since Cenozoic era.

Publications

Publications (119)
Article
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The reconstruction of the climate in the Miocene Shanwang basin is an important link in understanding past climate and environmental changes in East Asia. A recent study showed that the mean annual temperature (MAT) estimates derived from leaf margin analysis (LMA) and the Climate Leaf Analysis Multivariate Program (CLAMP) conflicted with and were...
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The living trees of Eucommia ulmoides, an endemic species in China, grow from 200 to 1700 m above sea level, within the geographic range from 102° E to 118° E and from 25° N to 35° N. Spring temperatures in these regions vary from 12.3°C to 20.1°C. A physiological study (using germination tests) of E. ulmoides has been undertaken to test the role o...
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Elucidating the spatio-temporal distributions of terrestrial plants is a key for interpreting the origin of distribution patterns and the tempo of intercontinental disjunction. Nordenskioeldia was distributed in eastern Asia and North America from the Late Cretaceous to the Miocene. Its fossil record provides important information on former pattern...
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Zelkova, with six extant species in Eurasia - three in East Asia (Z. schneideriana, Z. serrata, Z. sinica), one in south-western Asia (Z. carpinifolia) and two in southern Europe (Z. abelicea, Z. sicula) - was investigated with respect to leaf architecture and epidermal characters by LM and SEM. The leaf venation of Zelkova is relatively uniform, w...
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The presence of Keteleeria in the Miocene of eastern China is confirmed by the discovery of a cone, winged seeds, and leafy shoots. These are described and compared with other fossil and recent representatives. The best match was with K. rujadana, a K. fortunei-like fossil from the Oligocene of Oregon, U.S.A. The presence of similar, if not identic...
Article
Opium poppy, coca and cannabis are raw materials for three notorious illicit drugs. For a long time, drug lords have been growing and smuggling these drugs in a variety of ways and channels and are continually finding new ways of trafficking their wares, which has led to the increasing difficulty of global drug enforcement. In the present paper, we...
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Intelligent identification emerges as a revolutionary tool for humanity’s exploration of nature, democratizing the process of plant identification and diversity surveys beyond the exclusive realm of experts. It presents a more efficient, consistent, and cost-effective method for collaborative efforts in investigating, conserving, monitoring, and ma...
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Background: Understanding the relationship between human evolution and environmental changes is the key to lifting the veil on human origin. The hypothesis that environmental changes triggered the divergence of humans from apes (ca. 9.3-6.5 million years ago, Ma) has been poorly tested because of limited continuous environmental data from fossil l...
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Abstract As primary producers, plants provide food, oxygen, and other resources for global ecosystems, and should therefore be given priority in biodiversity protection. Most biodiversity research focuses on biodiversity hotspots, while biodiversity coldspots, such as deserts, are largely ignored. We propose that the factors shaping plant species d...
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Buckwheat is an important crop which originated in China and spread widely across Eurasia. However, exactly where in China domestication took place remains controversial. Archaeological and palynological records suggest a longer cultivation history of buckwheat in northern China than in southwestern China, but this conflicts with phylogenetic evide...
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Fossils recorded information of the past phenotype and geographic distribution directly. Incorporating fossils information into phylogenies of living taxa would deepen our understanding of their macroevolution. Accurate taxonomy of these fossils is the first step before employing them. However, the taxonomy of some fossils has not been evaluated ca...
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Artemisia, along with Chenopodiaceae, is the dominant component growing in the desert and dry grassland of the Northern Hemisphere. Artemisia pollen with its high productivity, wide distribution, and easy identification is usually regarded as an eco-indicator for assessing aridity and distinguishing grassland from desert vegetation in terms of the...
Preprint
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Desert areas occupy approximately 25% of total land area and are characterized by scarce precipitation, poor soil conditions, and a harsh ecological environment. Desertification may result in the loss of unique biological resources. Therefore, exploring the biodiversity of deserts and the causal factors of desertification is necessary to develop fu...
Article
Establishing the relationship between surface pollen assemblages and related modern vegetation provides a bridge for reconstructing the palaeo-vegetation succession and related climate changes. Numerous contributions have demonstrated an inconsistency between the relative abundance values of surface pollen assemblages and corresponding modern veget...
Preprint
Full-text available
Artemisia, along with Chenopodiaceae is the dominant component growing in the desert and dry grassland of the Northern Hemisphere. Artemisia pollen with its high productivity, wide distribution, and easy identification, is usually regarded as an eco-indicator for assessing aridity and distinguishing grassland from desert vegetation in terms of the...
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Nihewan Basin in North China is endowed with “the Olduvai Gorge in East Asia”. Both basins have a similar geological evolution with well-developed fluvial and lacustrine deposits, rich fossils and a large number of remains of early humans. Undoubtedly, it is a key area to study the changes of habitats of early humans in East Asia .Compiling the lit...
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As one of the components of urban air pollutants, pollen seriously affects our living environment and health, which is highly concerned by government and scientific community. Here, based on the airborne pollen data of past 60 years in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, we summarize the major pollen types and their seasonal distribution characteristic...
Article
Premise of research. Our concept of the former diversity and geographic spread of Platanaceae continues to expand. Unlobed platanaceous leaves have been poorly known in the fossil record of western North America. New information on the extinct Paleogene genus Platimeliphyllum and its associated reproductive structures is helping to unravel the biog...
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The evolution of the Asian monsoon from the Late Oligocene to the Early Miocene is poorly understood. Here, we first reconstruct the precipitation data of central Tibet during 26-16 Ma, applying the coexistence approach to sedimentary pollen data, and detect an intensified Asian monsoon with ∼1.35 and ∼0.33 Ma cycles. Paleoclimate modeling is used...
Article
This research (1) reports mega-fossil evidence of Marsilea and a pollen assemblage from the same fossil bed at 24.1 Ma in the Lunpola Basin; (2) estimates the elevation of the Lunpola paleolake, central Tibetan Plateau as 2990-3690 m asl, constrained by both paleolatitude and paleotemperature corrections; (3) depicts the ecosystem around this paleo...
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Aims The Nihewan Basin of North China, considered the cradle of Eastern civilisation, contains a set of late Cenozoic strata and artefacts used by Homo erectus in the early Pleistocene (~1.66 Ma -780 ka) and the cranial bones and teeth of early H. sapiens from the late middle Pleistocene (~370-260 ka). Palynological studies provide an opportunity t...
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The Hengduan Mountains of Southwest China are considered the most biologically diverse temperate ecosystem in the world. Here, we present a ~ 10,000-year pollen record from Shuanghaizi Lake, northwestern Yunnan, which we use to reconstruct vegetation dynamics, climatic fluctuations and variability in the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM). The results sug...
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The ancient Silk Road was a link of economic-cultural exchanges and religious communication between China and the West. Turpan in Xinjiang is an important site on this road and was once one of the areas where Buddhism flourished in the Western Regions. However, the relationship between environment, agricultural activity and Buddhism has received li...
Article
The Younger Dryas (YD) is the most recent abrupt climatic event recognized during the transition from the last glaciation to the Holocene. Growing evidence from the middle and high latitudes of Europe and North America shows that the climate within the YD event was highly unstable. Until recently, however, climate instability during this event has...
Article
The temperate desert in arid central Asia (ACA) is located along the Silk Road, an ancient land route used for economic and cultural exchange between the East and the West. In this paper, we survey of 145 surface pollen samples and related modern vegetation sample plots along an east-west desert transect in the eastern ACA in order to relate surfac...
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Background: Around the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, an obvious global cooling occurred, which resulted in dramatic changes in terrestrial ecosystems and the evolutionary trends of numerous organisms. However, how plant lineages responded to the cooling has remained unknown until now. Between ca. 70–60 Ma Mesocyparis McIver & Basinger (Cupr...
Article
Multi-proxy study of a 240 cm deep Lashoda Tal (lake) sediment profile, located adjacent to an archaeological mound in Central Ganga Plain, highlights the climate induced changes in the vegetation, ecology and culture since ∼25500 cal BP. Between ∼25500 and 22200 cal BP, the region shows grassland, incipient drainage and small ponds formed seasonal...
Article
The Holocene (11,500 cal. a B.P. to the present) is marked by the beginning of the Neolithic Age and origin of agriculture. The Holocene climatic changes no doubt influenced vegetation successions and human living conditions. However, few studies have attempted to link the palaeo-ecological data with archaeological evidence in order to understand H...
Preprint
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The Pliocene fluvio-lacustrine sediments of the Yuanmou Basin, Yunnan, near the southeastern part of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China, have yielded diverse and abundant assemblages of fossilized mammals and woods. The Yuanmou fossil woods reveal a wood flora with the highest diversity in the Cenozoic wood in China. The woods can play an important role...
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Members of the Chenopodiaceae are the most dominant elements in the central Asian desert. The different genera and species within this family are common in desert vegetation types. Should it prove possible to link pollen types in this family to specific desert vegetation, it would be feasible to trace vegetation successions in the geological past....
Article
The Younger Dryas (YD) is one of the most abrupt climatic events in Earth's recent history. The warming at the end of the YD, in particular, is considered to be comparable to the global warming seen in the 21st century. However, the YD termination has received little attention, particularly in the Hengduan Mountains of Southwestern China, a low lat...
Article
The temperate desert in arid Central Asia (ACA) has acted as a thoroughfare for the ancient Silk Road and today's Belt and Road, linking economic and cultural exchanges between East and West. The interaction between human sustainable development and the dynamic change in the desert ecosystem in this region is an area of concern for governments and...
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The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Pollen spectrum, a cornerstone for tracing the evolution of the eastern central Asian desert” (JQSR 5260) (Lu et al., 2018) [1] In this paper, we supply a dataset, which provides a descriptive and general summary of pollen characteristic of desert dominant species in t...
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The Hengduan Mountains, with a distinct altitudinal differentiation and strong vertical vegetation zonation, occupy an important position in southwestern China as a global hotspot of biodiversity. Pollen analysis of lake sediments sampled along an altitudinal gradient in this region helps us to understand how this vegetation zonation arose and how...
Data
Inferred ages based on age-depth model. (DOCX)
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The Plio-Pleistocene transition is a key time interval with a remarkable climate switch from “greenhouse” to “icehouse” conditions across the Tertiary-Quaternary boundary. The plant megafossils, pollen-spores and diatom assemblages found in Plio-Pleistocene deposits of Zhangcun Lake, Yushe Basin, on the eastern edge of the Chinese Loess Plateau, pr...
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We introduce research advances in vegetation succession and climatic changes in Beijing, North China, since the Holocene. In the early Holocene (12 000–8 000 cal a B. P.), a grassland and/or needle- and broad-leaved mixed forest was present, with an increment in broad-leaved trees, which indicated a relatively cold and dry climate changing to warm...
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Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is located in the internal arid area of Eurasia which is highly sensitive to global climate change.A large number of publications related to Holocene environmental change in dry area of Xinjiang are available based on different timescales. This paper reviews the Holocene high-resolution pollen records in Xinjiang du...
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Thuja, a genus of Cupressaceae comprising five extant species, presently occurs in both East Asia (3 species) and North America (2 species) and has a long fossil record from Paleocene to Pleistocene in the Northern Hemisphere. Two distinct hypotheses have been proposed to account for the origin and present distribution of this genus. Here we recogn...
Article
Thuja, with 5 extant species, exhibiting a disjunctive distribution between east asia (3 species) and North America (2 species), was investigated with respect to the morphological characters of foliage and cones by LM and SEM. Here we provide 2 keys to all 5 species of Thuja based on the cones and foliage respectively, which not only can be used fo...
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The area and elevation of the Tibetan Plateau over time has directly affected Asia's topography, the characteristics of the Asian monsoon, and modified global climate, but in ways that are poorly understood. Charting the uplift history is crucial for understanding the mechanisms that link elevation and climate irrespective of time and place. While...
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Modern pollen records have been used to successfully distinguish between specific prairie types in North America. Whether the pollen records can be used to detect the occurrence of Eurasian steppe, or even to further delimit various steppe types was until now unclear. Here we characterized modern pollen assemblages of meadow steppe, typical steppe...
Article
The Earth has undergone a significant climate switch from greenhouse to icehouse during the Plio-Pleistocene transition (PPT) around 2.7-2.4 million years ago (Ma), marked by the intensification of the Northern Hemisphere glaciation (NHG) ~2.7 Ma. Evidence based on oceanic CO2 ([CO2 ]aq ), supposed to be in close equilibrium with the atmospheric CO...
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The Upper Miocene Xiaohe Formation of the Yuanmou Basin in Yunnan Province, southwestern China, is famous for its hominoid fauna and is important for studying the Late Cenozoic human and mammal evolution. Abundant fossil wood was found associated with this fauna, which provided important evidence for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the basin....
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Branches and leafy shoots of fossil Glyptostrobus Endlicher (Cupressaceaes.l.), preserved as compressions of leaf cuticle with stomata and a single scale of a seed cone, have been found for the first time in the Jijuntun Formations of the Eocene in Fushun, Liaoning Province, NE China. These fossil remains are identified as Glyptostrobus by comparin...
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Eocene palynological samples from 37 widely distributed sites across China were analysed using Co-existence Approach (CA) to determine trends in space and time for seven palaeoclimate variables: Mean Annual Temperature (MAT), Mean Annual Precipitation (MAP), Mean Temperature of the Warmest Month (WMMT), Mean Temperature of the Coldest Month (CMMT),...
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The Gnetales are a higher group of Gymnosperms, but our current knowledge of the morphology of the early Gnetales is lacking. Most known specimens are fragmentary, which makes it difficult to elucidate the geological history and the early diversity and evolution of the group. New well-preserved specimens have been discovered in Liaoning, north Chin...
Article
To understand the vegetation succession and climatic changes at the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau in the Neogene, we reconstructed the Middle Miocene vegetation and climate based on palynological data from four localities, which are at different latitudes along the Ailao Mountains in Yunnan, southwest China. The palynological assemblag...
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We described the structure of two different morphological gall types, subglobular and fusiform in Ephedra distachya. The gall midge, Xerephedromyia ustjurtensis Fedotova (Dipte-ra: Cecidomyiidae) induces both types of gall formation. Galls are persistent resinous stem swellings usually subglobular and rarely fusiform in shape. Mature galls are soli...
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Yuanmou Basin of Yunnan, SW China, is a famous locality with hominids, hominoids, mammals and plant fossils. Based on the published megaflora and palynoflora data from Yuanmou Basin, the climate of Late Pliocene is reconstructed using the Coexistence Approach. The results indicate a warm and humid subtropical climate with a mean annual temperature...
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Charcoals collected from the middle-late Pliocene sediments of the Taigu Basin, Shanxi Province, China, have been identified as Ulmus sp. (Ulmaceae), Prunus sp., Maloidoxylon sp. (Rosaceae), and Maclura sp. (Moraceae). These taxa, along with the previously known fossils, indicate the occurrence of temperate climate and local wildfire at that time....
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Endocarps of the genus Prunus (family Rosaceae) have been described from early Eocene clay deposits in the Wutu Coal Mine, Shandong Province, China. Endocarps are elliptical or ovoid in lateral view, with a long canal that approaches the apex of the endocarp and contains the ventral vascular bundle. Comparisons with related living and fossil specie...
Article
To understand the Neogene climatic changes in eastern Asia and evaluate the intercontinental climatic differences, we have quantitatively reconstructed the vegetation successions and climatic changes in the late Pliocene Zhangcun area based on the palynological data and explored the regional climatic differences between central Europe and eastern A...
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Newly collected material of Comptonia leaves and fruits (C. naumannii and C. tymensis, respectively) from the lower Miocene of Weichang, China, are studied in detail. The leaves show great similarities in morphology and cuticular structures to those of the single extant species C. peregrina. It suggests a close genetic relationship between C. numan...
Article
By applying the Coexistence Approach (CA) to palynological data from the Laohutai, Lizigou, Guchengzi, Jijuntun and Xilutian Formations in Fushun, northeastern China, a quantitative reconstruction of the Palaeocene to Eocene climate is made. During that time, Mean Annual Temperature changed from 11.3 to 21 °C, Mean Annual Precipitation from 654 to...
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The Baiyangdian Lake is the largest freshwater lake and freshwater wetland in Hebei Province, North China. It is 162 km south of Beijing and covering an area of 366.0 km2 during high water periods. It consists of about 143 separated small water bodies connected by 3700 web-like waterways. The lake not only provides water for local use and different...
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Diatoms were analyzed in a laminated sediment sequence from the middle Miocene, lacustrine Shanwang Formation, Shandong Province, eastern China, to reconstruct past conditions in the lake and evaluate relationships between inferred changes in the aquatic and terrestrial environments. Changes in the diatom assemblages over the 22.9-m-long sediment s...
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Extant Berberis is a member of the basal eudicots with a South America (group Australes)-Old World (group Septentrionales) disjunctive distribution pattern. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the formation of this pattern. Recent molecular studies suggest that this pattern was caused by a vicariance event in the Cretaceous. More fos...
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The Early Miocene palynological assemblage of Guangfayong (GFY) in the Weichang District, Hebei Province, China has been studied. It consists of 48 palynomorphs belonging to 39 families, with pollen and spores belonging to angiosperms (28.9%), gymnosperms (59.9%), ferns (10.8%) and other elements (0.5%). Based on the palynological assemblages of GF...
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We briefly introduce some research highlights of recent five years on 1)the discoveries of new taxa and/or new records of Cenozoic plants; 2)paleoclimate reconstruction; 3)historical phytogeography; and 4)Holocene plant remains and their responses to the climate changes and human activities in China.