Abstract
BackgroundThe rise of high mountain chains is widely seen as one of the factors driving rapid diversification of land plants and the formation of biodiversity hotspots. Supporting evidence was reported for the impact of the rapid rise of the Andean mountains but this hypothesis has so far been less explored for the impact of the “roof of the world”. The formation of the Himalaya, and especially the rise of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau in the recent 20 million years, altered the monsoon regimes that dominate the current climates of South East Asia. Here, we infer the hypothesis that the rise of Himalaya had a strong impact on the plant diversity in the biodiversity hotspot of the Southwest Chinese Mountains.ResultsOur analyses of the diversification pattern of the derived fern genus Lepisorus recovered evidence for changes in plant diversity that correlated with the strengthening of South East Asian monsoon. Southwest China or Southwest China and Japan was recovered as the putative area of origin of Lepisorus and enhancing monsoon regime were found to shape the early diversification of the genus as well as subsequent radiations during the late Miocene and Pliocene.ConclusionsWe report new evidence for a coincidence of plant diversification and changes of the climate caused by the uplift of the Himalaya. These results are discussed in the context of the impact of incomplete taxon sampling, uncertainty of divergence time estimates, and limitations of current methods used to assess diversification rates.
Highlights
The rise of high mountain chains is widely seen as one of the factors driving rapid diversification of land plants and the formation of biodiversity hotspots
The exact climate history of these events is still subject of controversy [18,21], but existing evidence suggests an initiation of the East Asian monsoon in the late Oligocene followed by several periods of strengthening in the Miocene (e.g., ~15 million years ago (Ma) & ~ 8 Ma) and a putative abrupt strengthening in the Pliocene / Pleistocene periods (~3 Ma) [30,31]
The initial diversification of the genus Lepisorus dated back to around 17 Ma followed by several main cladogenese events in the period between 8 to 3 Ma (Figure 1)
Summary
The rise of high mountain chains is widely seen as one of the factors driving rapid diversification of land plants and the formation of biodiversity hotspots. The origin of the uneven distribution of plant diversity, in particular with biodiversity hotspots [1], has been increasingly explored by employing phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the history of selected lineages The majority of these studies addressed the origin of the Andean (e.g., [2,3,4]), Great Cape region (e.g., [5,6]) and Madagascan (e.g., [7,8]) biodiversity hotspots. The origin of the later biodiversity hotspot is widely attributed to the rise of the Himalaya and the subsequent formation of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), which is frequently referred as “the roof of the world” (e.g., [10,11,12,13,14,15,16]). The resulting changes in the amount and seasonal distribution of precipitation have likely supported a high rate of diversity turnovers including radiations of various plant lineages that compose the unique biodiversity of this region today
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