New Subject Editor in Chinese Vascular Plant Taxonomy
Submitted by editor on 10 December 2025.
We welcome Professor Tao Deng as new Subject Editor for Chinese vascular plants, with a focus on angiosperms from southwest China and the adjacent Pan-Third Pole regions!
Tao Deng is a researcher at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His work focuses on the systematics, phylogeny and biogeography of plants, with a particular emphasis on the flora of East Asia. He uses a variety of methods, from classical taxonomy and morphological study to DNA-sequence analysis, ecological niche modelling, and integration of fossil, historical-geography and climate-data, to unravel how plant lineages originated, diversified, and spread over time. Among his interests are reconstructing evolutionary relationships, resolving taxonomical questions in challenging groups, examining trait evolution, and illuminating the historical and ecological mechanisms that shaped current plant-diversity patterns. His research has contributed to understanding not only species-level taxonomy and phylogeny but also large-scale patterns of plant diversity, distribution, and the biogeographic history of East-Asian flora.