Spatial Patterns of Seed Plants and Their Conservation Priorities in Jiangxi Province, China

ABSTRACT Identifying and protecting biodiversity hotspots is crucial for regional biodiversity conservation. Jiangxi province lies in the core of Asian subtropical evergreen broad‐leaved forests (EBLFs), which provides an ideal region to comprehensively address the regional biodiversity conservation. We combined elevation and land‐cover data to filter seed plant occurrences, evaluated the spatial patterns of seed plants at the county level and across 11 spatial grain sizes, and then identified the conservation priority areas. We have delineated more detailed spatial phylogenetic patterns at the 10 × 10 km 2 grid cells level. Our results suggested that higher species richness (SR) and phylogenetic diversity (PD) were observed in eastern, southern, and western Jiangxi. In contrast, a lower standard effective size of PD (ses.PD) was observed in northeastern, southern, and northwestern Jiangxi. Both the higher net relatedness index (NRI) and the higher nearest taxon index (NTI) occurred in the areas around the Huaiyu Mountains, northern Nanling Mountains, and Mufu Mountains. Elevation and precipitation were mainly contributed to the spatial patterns of seed plants in Jiangxi province. Overall, 471 grid cells were identified as conservation priority areas, including most of mountains and Poyang Lake. The species “covered” in current protected areas reached 50.6% and would increase to 61.4% in conservation priority areas. The conservation gaps mainly concentrate on areas near mountains. Our results highlight that biodiversity conservation in EBLFs should pay attention to mountains with high elevation.