Ongoing climate and land use changes pose significant threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services in Western Africa. High deforestation rates, combined with climate-driven range shifts, impact the distribution of tree species providing key ecosystem services such as timber. However, the distribution of timber species in Nigeria under climate and land use change is poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we assesse...

Aim Recent investigations on the floristic exchange between Southeast Asia and Australia have shown a clear dispersal directionality bias (West to East) of wet‐adapted plant taxa. However, dispersal routes and directions of wet forest taxa into the South Pacific remain insufficiently known. We here aimed to establish the most likely routes and directions of plant dispersal into the Southwest Pacific islands. Location Southeast...

We here provide, first, a general introduction into the woody angiosperm family Meliaceae, including updated numbers of the genera and species found in different parts of the globe, paying attention to geographic centres of diversity and patterns of endemism. Second, and more specifically, we review the latest literature concerning land connections (i) between Eurasia and North America, (ii) between North America and South Ame...

Aim Invertebrate‐mediated dispersal has previously been proposed to promote angiosperm diversification and distribution. However, little is known about the specific impact of invertebrate‐mediated dispersal on the biogeography and current distribution of plants. We aim to infer the influence of vespicochorous (hornet) and myrmecochorous (ant) dispersal on the historical biogeography of herbaceous monocot species. Location Sout...

Aim Our objective is to analyse global‐scale patterns of mountain biodiversity and the driving forces leading to the observed patterns. More specifically, we test the ‘mountain geobiodiversity hypothesis’ (MGH) which is based on the assumption that it is not mountain‐uplift alone which drives the evolution of mountain biodiversity, but rather the combination of geodiversity evolution and Neogene and Pleistocene climate changes...

Aim We investigated whether the fossil‐rich and cosmopolitan buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae, dating back to the Cretaceous) was influenced by vicariance events following the Gondwanan breakup. To answer this question, we focused on the ziziphoid lineage of the buckthorn family, because extant ziziphoid taxa comprise tribes and genera exclusively or at least predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere (Australia, Africa,...

Aim We investigated the historical biogeography and diversification of Gentiana L. (Gentianaceae). Our study depicts the origin and dispersal routes of this alpine genus, and the role of the uplift of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau ( QTP ) and past climate changes as triggers for its diversification. Location Tibeto‐Himalayan region and world‐wide mountain habitats. Methods Our sampling represents more than 50% of the extant Gentia...

Aim We investigated the biogeography of the subtropical mountain genus Tripterospermum Blume (Gentianaceae), disjunctly distributed at the southern fringe of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau ( QTP ) and other mountain systems within the biodiversity hotspots of Southeast Asia. This study reveals dispersal routes among these areas. Location East China, Indochina, Japan, the Philippines, southeastern fringe of the Qinghai–Tibetan Pla...