A noteworthy case of rewilding Chinese yew from a garden population in eastern China

Abstract

Chinese yew (Taxus wallichiana var. mairei) is ranked as a rare and endangered plant of first-grade protection of China. It has been widely cultivated in 17 provinces of China over the past few decades. However, little is known about the dispersion, rewilding, and ecological influence of Chinese yew’s offspring during cultivation. Here, we report a noteworthy case of this species, via ex situ conservation, which has successfully spread into different secondary forests, thus forming a stable regenerating population in eastern China. The establishment of this yew population, which has > 900 individuals and 7 ha area, can be ascribed to two key ecological factors: (1) secondary forest near the parent yews that provided suitable microhabitats in which progeny yews could germinate and grow, and (2) seed-foraging and transportation by native birds. Thus, this case may offer a pathway for conserving endangered Chinese Taxus species, which can attract frugivorous birds to disperse their seeds. In addition, it is necessary to monitor the growth performance of progeny population in the field.

Response of distribution patterns of two closely related species in Taxus genus to climate change since last inter‐glacial

“…Notably, the suitable area of the two species will shrink from current period to future period because the plant growth, development and reproduction are vulnerable to the effects of increasing global temperature (Liu, Feng, et al, 2019 ; Liu, Wang, et al, 2019 ). Our result is consistent with the previous findings of study of T. mairei (Li, Zhang, & Griffith, 2021 ; Li, Zhang, Zhu, et al, 2021 ). Meanwhile, the suitable area of Taxus cuspidata and Taxus wallichiana will be reduced with the rising temperature in the future (the 2050 and 2070) (Li et al, 2020 ; Su et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Previous studies have shown that species will move northward and upwards with the increasing temperature, such as Quercus lamellosa (Guo et al, 2021 ), Cyananthus (He et al, 2019 ), Quercus kerrii (Jiang et al, 2018 ), wild soybean (He et al, 2016 ), and T. wallichiana (Li et al, 2020 ). Likewise, this study also found an upward and northward shift trend for T. mairei , which is consistent with the reports by Li, Zhang, and Griffith ( 2021 ), Li, Zhang, Zhu, et al ( 2021 ) and Poudel et al ( 2012 ). Instead, T. chinensis shifted downward and northward in China.…”

“…This can be understood from the following two points. First, biological traits such as limited dispersal capacity, long generation time and low rate of seed germination of Taxus (Keppel et al, 2017 ; Li, Zhang, & Griffith, 2021 ; Li, Zhang, Zhu, et al, 2021 ; Ru, 2006 ; Wang et al, 2018 , 2019 ). Second, the main distribution region of the natural populations of the two species were in the mountains such as the Qinling, Nanling, and Wuyi Mountains in China (Fu et al, 1999 ; Li et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Three topographical variables, including the elevation obtained from the WorldClim database ( https://worldclim.org ), and the slope and aspect obtained from Digital Elevation Model using the 3D analyst tools in the software ArcGIS 10.4. Five soil variables were downloaded from the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD, https://www.fao.org/soils‐portal/data‐hub/soil‐maps‐and‐databases/harmonized‐world‐soil‐database‐v12/en/ ) based on previous studies (Guo et al, 2019 ; Li, Zhang, & Griffith, 2021 ; Li, Zhang, Zhu, et al, 2021 ; Ru, 2006 ), and the correlation coefficient between the five soil variables was less than 0.7 (Figure S3 ). Human interference index (HII) was downloaded from Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC, http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu ) (Gallardo et al, 2015 ; Madella et al, 2021 ).…”

“…We conservatively defined the background range as an area surrounding our occurrence location by buffering a bounding box. We set the buffer distance as 7 degrees (about 779 km) based on the dispersion distance of the Taxus pollens and seeds (Brown et al, 2017 ; Li et al, 2015 ; Li, Zhang, & Griffith, 2021 ; Li, Zhang, Zhu, et al, 2021 ). A total of 10,000 background points were randomly generated using the function randomPoints in the dismo package (Hijmans et al, 2021 ).…”