Cataloguing vascular plant diversity of karst caves in China
Long‐Fei Fu, Alexandre K. Monro, Yi‐Gang Wei
Abstract
Aim: Caves are widespread geological structures within karst landscapes which is associated with diverse flora. In the last 20 years, dozens of new species from Chinese caves have been described, many of which are not in the current list of the Chinese cave flora. In this study, we aimed to generate an updated list of China's cave flora to better reflect the species diversity and endemism of the ecosystem and raise attention to its importance for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. Methods: We created a catalogue of all the Chinese cave plants by integrating the published regional lists of cave plants and reviewing the publications describing newly discovered species from Chinese caves. We utilized this information to generate an updated list of China's cave flora of vascular plants. All accepted names were retained while the repetitive and unidentified names were eliminated based on the database of Plants of the World Online (POWO). The characteristics of the cave flora, the species distribution within caves, and the IUCN status of each species' were analyzed. Results: From 2001 to 2020, one new genus and 170 new species (including infraspecific taxa) belonging to 31 genera