Ancient orogenic and monsoon-driven assembly of the world’s richest temperate alpine flora

2020/07/30 by Wenna Ding, Richard H. Ree, Robert A. Spicer +1 · 28 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Plant Diversity and Evolution #Plant and Fungal Species Descriptions #Plant and animal studies

paper · doi:10.1126/science.abb4484

openalex publication_date 2020/07/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Understanding how alpine biotas formed in response to historical environmental change may improve our ability to predict and mitigate the threats to alpine species posed by global warming. In the world's richest temperate alpine flora, that of the Tibet-Himalaya-Hengduan region, phylogenetic reconstructions of biome and geographic range evolution show that extant lineages emerged by the early Oligocene and diversified first in the Hengduan Mountains. By the early to middle Miocene, accelerated diversification and colonization of adjacent regions were likely driven jointly by mountain building and intensification of the Asian monsoon. The alpine flora of the Hengduan Mountains has continuously existed far longer than any other alpine flora on Earth and illustrates how modern biotas have been shaped by past geological and climatic events.

Citations

• Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth
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• Stochastic Character Mapping of State-Dependent Diversification Reveals the Tempo of Evolutionary Decline in Self-Compatible Onagraceae Lineages
• Mesozoic–Cenozoic geological evolution of the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen and working tectonic hypotheses

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