Studies On Brachytheciaceae Of Shandong Province, China

Brachytheciaceae, one of the largest families of pleurocarpous mosses, spreads widelyin the Northern Hemisphere. The generic and specific delimitations of Brachytheciaceae areagreed to be difficult because its morphology can be easily affected by environmentconditions which make the same species varies in morphologies. Besides, semblablegametophytes and rare sporophores make the work more difficult. Locating in in the east ofChina with a typical continental monsoon climate, Shandong Province has abundanceresources of Brachytheciaceae. Therefore, this study contributes to make the species ofBrachytheciaceae in Shandong Province clearer and provides new materials for the study ofBrachytheciaceae species.This study covers over1,500samples, which were collected by Pro. Zhao Zuntian andlab personnel all over Shandong Province from1984to1992and from2007to present. Byarranging and identifying the samples, this paper provides with the catalogue ofBrachytheciaceae in Shandong Province, including10genus and60species, one new recordspecies in China and32new records in Shandong Province.This study revises Flora Bryophytorum Shandong Icorum, pointing out that threespecies were improperly identified and two genus and4species were in doubt because of thediscovery of original sample.This research applies the distribution types of Bryophytes by Zhang li&Richard T.Corlett. According to the division, Brachytheciaceae in Shandong Province can be dividedinto nine floras: Eastern Asian (36.67%), Temperate (28.33%) and Tropical (3.33%), whichindicates that Brachytheciaceae has ancient character and fits better in temperateenvironment rather than tropical environment.This study compares the species richness of Brachytheciaceae among mountains in theEast of Shandong Province (Kunyu Mountain and Mount Lao) and mountains in themiddle-south of Shandong Province (Mount Tai and Mount Meng). We find that KunyuMountain shares the highest species richness, followed by Mount Tai, Mount Lao andMount Meng. This result shows that the richness of Brachytheciaceae is influenced by thespecial land and sea location of Shandong Province and human disturbance.This research also compares the species richness of Brachytheciaceae of ShandongProvince with five other districts: Jiangsu Province, Anhui Province, Hebei Province, InnerMongolia, Shanxi Province and Japan. By comparison, we find that Shandong Provinceshares the highest similarity in genus and species with Jiangsu Province, while shares thelowest similarity with Hebei Province; the similarity coefficients between Shandong Province and the other five other districts are close: from50%to65%; the similaritycoefficients between Shandong Province and Anhui Province and Jiangsu Province are high,over60%. The special geographical position of Shandong Province would explain theresults above.