Diversification of Southeast Asian mammals during the Quaternary glaciation: insights from the genomic era

Abstract

Southeast (SE) Asia refers to the region east to the Philippine islands, west to the Indian subcontinent, north to central China and south to the Sunda islands. This region includes six of the world's 25 biodiversity hotspots and is of strategic significance in global biodiversity conservation. The complicated geological and climatological history of this region has resulted in extremely high species diversity and endemism. Two classic biogeographic boundaries, the Wallace Line and the Isthmus of Kra, divide SE Asia into the Indochinese province to the north and Sundaic province to the south. Because the Indochinese and Sundaic provinces are connected today through the Malay Peninsula and the Sunda shelf was exposed for the majority of time during the Quaternary glaciation, previous biogeographic studies have proposed that gene flow occurred between mainland and different island populations causing low divergence in the region. However, recent molecular genetic studies have reported that migration of terrestrial mammal populations was not as great as previously thought due to ecological restrictions. Thus, deep vicariant divergence was present in several mammals as early as two million years ago and appeared not to have been affected by gene flow following the formation of land bridges during later glacial periods. Furthermore, the super eruption of