RESUMEN
Species distribution modeling (SDM) is currently the primary tool for predicting suitable habitats for species. In this study, we used Abies kawakamii, a species endemic to Taiwan. Being the only Abies species distributed in high mountains, it acts as an ecological indicator on the subtropical island. We analyzed a vegetation map derived from remote sensing and ground surveys using SDM. The actual distribution of A. kawakamii in Taiwan has a total area of 16,857 ha distributed at an altitude of 2700-3600 m, and it often forms a monodominant forest at 3100-3600 m with the higher altitude edge as a forest line. Exploring the potential distribution of A. kawakamii through MaxEnt showed that the suitable habitat was 73,151 ha under the current climate. Under the scenarios of temperature increases of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 °C, suitable habitat for A. kawakamii will gradually decrease to 70.2%, 47.1%, 30.2%, and 10.0% of this area, respectively, indicating that A. kawakamii will greatly decline under these climate warming scenarios. Fire burning disturbance may be the most significant damage to A. kawakamii at present. Although A. kawakamii has been protected by conservation areas and its natural regeneration is in good condition, it rarely has the opportunity to migrate upwards during climate warming. We suggest that in the future, research on the natural regeneration and artificial restoration of A. kawakamii should be emphasized, especially in the forest line ecotone.
RESUMEN
Pseudosasa usawae is an endemic species in Taiwan, and grows at an altitude of 600-1200 m. In this study, we fully characterized the complete chloroplast genome of P. usawae. The complete chloroplast sequence was 139,660 bp, including large single-copy (LSC), small single-copy (SSC), and a pair of invert repeats (IR) region of 83,271, 12,803, and 21,793 bp. Besides, the plastid genome comprised a total of 129 genes, including protein-coding, tRNA, and rRNA genes as 83, 38, and 8 genes. Phylogenetic analysis reveals that P. usawae is closely associated with Phyllostachys genus clade, sister to the lineage of Phyllostachys.
RESUMEN
A revision of Nertera (Rubiaceae) in Taiwan was carried out by classical taxonomic methods and the presence of two endemic species was confirmed. Only one species, misapplied as N.granadensis, had been reported in the second edition of "Flora of Taiwan", but there were two additional endemic species in this genus: N.nigricarpa and N.taiwaniana confirmed. Nerteranigricarpa is characterised by the entire leaf, purple-black petals, black fruits and dark-purple seeds with raised striate. Nerterataiwaniana has leaves with undulated margins, yellowish-green petals, red fruits and yellow-white seeds without striate. N.granadensis is excluded from the flora of this Island.
RESUMEN
This study proposed a novel methodology to classify the shape of gaps using landscape indices and multivariate statistics. Patch-level indices were used to collect the qualified shape and spatial configuration characteristics for canopy gaps in the Lienhuachih Experimental Forest in Taiwan in 1998 and 2002. Non-hierarchical cluster analysis was used to assess the optimal number of gap clusters and canonical discriminant analysis was used to generate the discriminant functions for canopy gap classification. The gaps for the two periods were optimally classified into three categories. In general, gap type 1 had a more complex shape, gap type 2 was more elongated and gap type 3 had the largest gaps that were more regular in shape. The results were evaluated using Wilks' lambda as satisfactory (p < 0.001). The agreement rate of confusion matrices exceeded 96%. Differences in gap characteristics between the classified gap types that were determined using a one-way ANOVA showed a statistical significance in all patch indices (p = 0.00), except for the Euclidean nearest neighbor distance (ENN) in 2002. Taken together, these results demonstrated the feasibility and applicability of the proposed methodology to classify the shape of a gap.