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Evolutionary assembly of flowering plants into sky islands

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 640–646 (2021)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 16 April 2021

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Abstract

Alpine floras (plants in the vegetation belts above the climatic treelines) experience cold climates, particularly in temperate mountains during winter, but they are generally species-rich. Yet, biogeographers have not determined whether these floras represent evolutionarily independent but convergent assemblages drawn from their regional floras, or whether they originated from particular clades pre-adapted to harsh conditions. Here, we analyse the evolutionary relationships of angiosperm (flowering plant) species in 63 alpine floras worldwide (~7,000 species) in comparison with their regional floras (~94,000 species) and with the entire global flora. We find that each of the alpine floras represents an assemblage of more closely related species than their respective regional floras. The degree of phylogenetic clustering of species in alpine floras in tropical mountains exceeds that in temperate mountains. However, in relation to the global flora, temperate alpine floras are phylogenetically closely related subsets of floras that colonized cold temperate areas during interglacial periods. We conclude that alpine floras include a few dominant families that have evolved tolerance to low temperature, and that evolutionary niche conservatism explains their phylogenetic clustering, compared with species in their regional species pools.

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Fig. 1: Geographic patterns of MPDses and PDses for the 63 alpine floras used in this study.
Fig. 2: Comparisons of MPDses and PDses for different climates (temperate versus tropical), different continents, and the globe.
Fig. 3: Relationships between absolute latitude and MPDses.

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Data availability

The data used in this study have been published and are accessible. Details about the data sources are provided in Supplementary Table 1 or cited in the article. The data on which the analyses of this study were based are available at https://github.com/Kifir0411/NATECOLEVOL-200610646.

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Acknowledgements

We thank F. Boucher and S. Lavergne for their constructive comments, as well as numerous collaborators and colleagues for digitized data. H.Q. acknowledges the Key Projects of the Joint Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. U1802232).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China

    Hong Qian

  2. Research and Collections Center, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL, USA

    Hong Qian

  3. Department of Biology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Robert E. Ricklefs

  4. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LECA, Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine, Grenoble, France

    Wilfried Thuiller

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  1. Hong Qian
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Contributions

H.Q., R.E.R. and W.T. discussed and developed the ideas presented in the article. H.Q. analysed the data. H.Q., W.T. and R.E.R. wrote the article.

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Correspondence to Hong Qian.

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Peer review information Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Christopher Dick and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 and Figs. 1–3.

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Qian, H., Ricklefs, R.E. & Thuiller, W. Evolutionary assembly of flowering plants into sky islands. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 640–646 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01423-1

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