Global biodiversity patterns of woody and herbaceous flowering plants in space and time

<p>Plant biodiversity can be structured into different growth forms (i.e. woody vs. herbaceous) with divergent distributions, evolutionary histories, and relationships with climate thus they should be separately analyzed to better understand plant diversity. Flowering plants (angiosperms) are the most successful group of plants and have a diversity of growth forms that differs from other groups such as gymnosperms, all of which are woody species. However, there is still a gap in current growth form databases to cover most angiosperms. To fill the gap, this study collect data on growth forms of angiosperm species from published floras, online databases, and peer-reviewed journal articles and compiled a massive database of growth forms (woody and herbaceous, 300,750 species). Combined with distributions of 332,293 species, we mapped the current global geographical patterns in woody and herbaceous species as well as their relative proportion and assess their relationship with climate. This study also reconstructed ancestral states of growth forms through the angiosperm phylogeny to demonstrate the Cenozoic evolutionary dynamics of growth forms and explore the evolutionary transitions between the two growth forms.</p>