Palaeobotanical evidence reveals the living conditions of Miocene Lufengpithecus in East Asia.

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 localities. Lufengpithecus (12.5-6.0 Ma) found on the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau (SEMTP) across the ape-human split provides a good chance for testing this hypothesis. RESULTS: Here, we reconstructed the habitats of L. keiyuanensis (12.5-11.6 Ma) with comprehensive vegetation, climate, and potential food web data by palaeobotanical evidence, together with other multidisciplinary data and partly tested the environment-driven hypothesis by revealing the living conditions of Lufengpithecus. CONCLUSION: A detailed comparison of hominoids on different continents reveals their behaviour and fate divergence across the ape-human split against the background of global climate change, i.e., the stable living conditions of SEMTP not only provided a so-called 'refuge' for arboreal Lufengpithecus but also acted as a 'double-edged sword', preventing their further evolution while vegetation shifts in East Africa probably stimulated the emergence of human bipedalism, and the intense climatic changes in Europe possibly prevented those hominoids from surviving that time interval. Our findings provide interesting insight into the environmental impacts on the behavioural evolution of hominoids.

Combining complete chloroplast genome sequences with target loci data and morphology to resolve species limits in Triplostegia (Caprifoliaceae).

Species represent the most basic unit of taxonomy. As such, species delimitation represents a crucial issue for biodiversity conservation. Taxonomic practices were revolutionized in the last three decades due to the increasing availability of molecular phylogenetic data. The genus Triplostegia (Caprifoliaceae) traditionally consists of two species, T. glandulifera and T. grandiflora, distinguishable mainly based on quantitative morphological features. In this study, we sequenced nine chloroplast loci (i.e., accD, psbK-psbI, rbcL-accD, rpoB-trnC, rps16-trnQ, trnE-trnT, trnF-ndhJ, trnH-psbA, trnS-trnG) and one nuclear locus (ITS) of 16 individuals of Triplostegia representing the entire distribution range of both species recognized. Furthermore, we also obtained whole chloroplast sequences for 11 of the 16 individuals for which silica gel-dried leaves were available. Our phylogenetic analyses integrating chloroplast genome sequences and multiple loci data revealed that Triplostegia includes four main clades that largely match geography. Neither T. grandiflora nor T. glandulifera was recovered as monophyletic and no diagnosable differences in leaf, flower, and pollen traits were detected between the two species, indicating the need for a revised species circumscription within Triplostegia. Our study highlights the importance of combining data from different sources while defining species limits.

Dataset of pollen morphological traits of 56 dominant species among desert vegetation in the eastern arid central Asia.

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 the eastern arid central Asia (ACA). The other important component is the illustration on pollen grains traits under light microscopy (LM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Pollen grains of 56 species are extracted from voucher specimens from the PE herbarium at the Institute of Botany. It is worth noting that these species own special distribution patterns in China. The distribution maps are plotted using the Google Maps and the species distribution data at the county level supplied by the Chinese Virtual Herbarium (http://www.cvh.ac.cn/).