Oct. 24-26, 2009, Yingjie Overseas Exchange Center, Peking University, Beijing, China中文版

Some problems in biogeographic studies in China

De-Zhu Li

Kunming Institute of Botany, CAS, China

Abstract

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of organisms over space and time. It is also a very important approach to the understanding of evolution of organisms and their environments. The patterns of distribution of organisms can usually be explained through a combination of modern and historical factors such as speciation, extinction, continental drift, glaciation, climate change, and geographic constraints. In the past decades, the study of biogeography has been expanded by the development of molecular systematics, creating new disciplines such as molecular biogeography and phylogeography, and vacariance biogeography.

The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system was published in 1998, which reshaped the study of angiosperm biogeography. The Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae project was initiated in 1959 and completed by 2004. It is the largest Flora so far completed in the world, including 31,228 species of vascular plants. The English-language and updated Flora of China (FOC) is in progress. Molecular phylogenetic and biogeographic studies of angiosperms and other organisms in the past 10 years also witnessed a progressive development. Integration of morphological and molecular data and fossil evidence revealed some significant results.

Some problems in biogeographic studies in China will be further discussed.

De-Zhu Li

Kunming Institute of Botany, CAS, China

Biography

Dr. LI De-Zhu, male, born on 7 November 1963, has been a research professor of botany since December 1996 and a deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Kunming Institute of Botany since September 1997 and director of the same institution since October 2005.

Prof. Li studied at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Kunming Institute of Botany for his PhD degree from 1987 to 1990. He worked at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 1993- 1994 as a Ferguson Postdoctoral Fellow and at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden as a Taxonomist from 1994 to 1996. He was elected as a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1996. Prof. Li holds academic appointments in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Graduate School from 1997 and has been an honorary follow of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh since 2004. Prof. Li is a member of the joint editorial committee member of the Flora of China (English and updated) project and editor-in-chief of the journal Acta Botanica Yunnanica, an member of the editorial board of Journal of Integrative Plant Biology, one of the associate editors for BMC Evolutionary Biology and Journal of Systematics and Evolution (formerly Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica). He is a member of the national committee of international Barcode of Life (iBOL) project and co-chair of the plant work group. Prof. Li is a Vice President of the Botanical Society of China since 2008.

Prof. Li’s research interests focus on systematics, biogeography and molecular evolution of flowering plants in China, particularly the bamboos, some conifer genera (e.g., Pinus and Taxus) and the Cucurbitaceae. Prof. Li is the main author of some 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including those in Trends in Plant Science, Molecular Ecology, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Taxon and Plant Systematics and Evolution. He is the author or editor of nine monographs and books, including the Lonicera account of the European Garden Flora and the bamboo account of the Flora of China.