Dataset of pollen morphological traits of 56 dominant species among desert vegetation in the eastern arid central Asia

Kai-Qing Lu; Gan Xie; Min Li; Jin-Feng Li; Anjali Trivedi; David K Ferguson; Yi-Feng Yao; Yu-Fei Wang

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2018.03.122

Dataset of pollen morphological traits of 56 dominant species among desert vegetation in the eastern arid central Asia

Data Brief. 2018 Mar 31:18:1022-1046. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2018.03.122. eCollection 2018 Jun.

Authors

Kai-Qing Lu^{1

2}, Gan Xie^{1

2}, Min Li¹, Jin-Feng Li¹, Anjali Trivedi³, David K Ferguson⁴, Yi-Feng Yao¹, Yu-Fei Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20 Nanxincun Xiangshan, Beijing 100093, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China.
³ Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, 53 University Road, Lucknow 226007, India.
⁴ University of Vienna, Institute of Palaeontology, Althanstrasse 14, Vienna A-1090, Austria.

Abstract

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled "Pollen spectrum, a cornerstone for tracing the evolution of the eastern central Asian desert" (JQSR 5260) (Lu et al., 2018) [1] In this paper, we supply a dataset, which provides a descriptive and general summary of pollen characteristic of desert dominant species in the eastern arid central Asia (ACA). The other important component is the illustration on pollen grains traits under light microscopy (LM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Pollen grains of 56 species are extracted from voucher specimens from the PE herbarium at the Institute of Botany. It is worth noting that these species own special distribution patterns in China. The distribution maps are plotted using the Google Maps and the species distribution data at the county level supplied by the Chinese Virtual Herbarium (http://www.cvh.ac.cn/).

Keywords: Arid central Asia; Desert vegetation; Pollen morphological traits; Temperate desert.