Cryptocarya chinensis from the Upper Pleistocene of South China and its biogeographic and paleoecological implications

Lu-Liang Huang; Shu-Feng Li; Wei-Ye Huang; Jian-Hua Jin; Alexei A Oskolski

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107313

Cryptocarya chinensis from the Upper Pleistocene of South China and its biogeographic and paleoecological implications

iScience. 2023 Jul 10;26(8):107313. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107313. eCollection 2023 Aug 18.

Authors

Lu-Liang Huang^{1

2}, Shu-Feng Li³, Wei-Ye Huang¹, Jian-Hua Jin¹, Alexei A Oskolski^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, School of Life Sciences/School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla 666303, China.
⁴ Department of Botany and Plant Biotechnology, University of Johannesburg, P. O. Box 524 Auckland Park, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa.
⁵ Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Popov str. 2, 197376 St. Petersburg, Russia.

Abstract

Anatomical structure of mummified wood of Cryptocarya (Lauraceae) from the Upper Pleistocene of Maoming, South China and the woods of 15 extant species of Cryptocarya from China and Malaysia were examined. The fossil wood has been convincingly attributed to extant species Cryptocarya chinensis (Hance) Hemsl. This is the first reliable fossil record of Cryptocarya in Asia. The finding combined with the results of Biomod2 species distribution modeling suggest that the range of C. chinensis in the Late Pleistocene in South China and North Vietnam was very restricted due to increased continental aridity and enhanced temperature seasonality in this region. Thus, modern populations of C. chinensis in Maoming can be considered as glacial relicts. The mines (larval tunnels) produced by the larvae of flies from the genus Phytobia Lioy (Agromyzidae, Diptera) were observed in fossil wood under study. These cambial miners have never been reported in Cryptocarya.

Keywords: Botany; Paleobiology; plant systematics.

Associated data

Dryad/10.5061/dryad.27f8s90