Abstract
The European steppes and their biota have been hypothesized to be either young remnants of the Pleistocene steppe belt or, alternatively, to represent relicts of long-term persisting populations; both scenarios directly bear on nature conservation priorities. Here, we evaluate the conservation value of threatened disjunct steppic grassland habitats in Europe in the context of the Eurasian steppe biome. We use genomic data and ecological niche modelling to assess pre-defined, biome-specific criteria for three plant and three arthropod species. We show that the evolutionary history of Eurasian steppe biota is strikingly congruent across species. The biota of European steppe outposts were long-term isolated from the Asian steppes, and European steppes emerged as disproportionally conservation relevant, harbouring regionally endemic genetic lineages, large genetic diversity, and a mosaic of stable refugia. We emphasize that conserving what is left of Europe’s steppes is crucial for conserving the biological diversity of the entire Eurasian steppe biome.
Highlights
The European steppes and their biota have been hypothesized to be either young remnants of the Pleistocene steppe belt or, alternatively, to represent relicts of long-term persisting populations; both scenarios directly bear on nature conservation priorities
Extrazonal steppe biota instead could have persisted past warm interglacials in refugia that overlap with their presentday occurrences
We present a comparative study on the phylogeography of the Eurasian steppes using a multidisciplinary, range-wide, multi-taxa, and cross-phyla approach that includes populations of six representative animal and plant steppe species sampled from Western Europe to Central Asia
Summary
The European steppes and their biota have been hypothesized to be either young remnants of the Pleistocene steppe belt or, alternatively, to represent relicts of long-term persisting populations; both scenarios directly bear on nature conservation priorities. The largely overlapping species composition of extrazonal and zonal steppes has served as the basis for the hypothesis[11,12,13] that the European extrazonal steppes and their biota are relatively young remnants of the zonal steppe belt that covered large parts of Eurasia during cold stages of the Pleistocene[11,12] (Fig. 1b). Extrazonal steppe biota instead could have persisted past warm interglacials in refugia that overlap with their presentday occurrences Under this scenario, evolutionary processes such as genetic drift and/or ecological adaptation would have caused deep divergence among zonal and extrazonal lineages[14] (the terms zonal lineage and extrazonal lineage refer to the source area of the respective lineage hereafter). Considering this imbalance along with the fact that zonal and extrazonal steppes share many species, one could legitimately question whether it is necessary to invest resources for the protection and management of the extrazonal European steppes
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