"Into and Out of" the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Himalayas: Centers of origin and diversification across five clades of Eurasian montane and alpine passerine birds - PubMed (original) (raw)

. 2020 Aug 4;10(17):9283-9300.

doi: 10.1002/ece3.6615. eCollection 2020 Sep.

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"Into and Out of" the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Himalayas: Centers of origin and diversification across five clades of Eurasian montane and alpine passerine birds

Martin Päckert et al. Ecol Evol. 2020.

Abstract

Encompassing some of the major hotspots of biodiversity on Earth, large mountain systems have long held the attention of evolutionary biologists. The region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is considered a biogeographic source for multiple colonization events into adjacent areas including the northern Palearctic. The faunal exchange between the QTP and adjacent regions could thus represent a one-way street ("out of" the QTP). However, immigration into the QTP region has so far received only little attention, despite its potential to shape faunal and floral communities of the QTP. In this study, we investigated centers of origin and dispersal routes between the QTP, its forested margins and adjacent regions for five clades of alpine and montane birds of the passerine superfamily Passeroidea. We performed an ancestral area reconstruction using BioGeoBEARS and inferred a time-calibrated backbone phylogeny for 279 taxa of Passeroidea. The oldest endemic species of the QTP was dated to the early Miocene (ca. 20 Ma). Several additional QTP endemics evolved in the mid to late Miocene (12-7 Ma). The inferred centers of origin and diversification for some of our target clades matched the "out of Tibet hypothesis' or the "out of Himalayas hypothesis" for others they matched the "into Tibet hypothesis." Three radiations included multiple independent Pleistocene colonization events to regions as distant as the Western Palearctic and the Nearctic. We conclude that faunal exchange between the QTP and adjacent regions was bidirectional through time, and the QTP region has thus harbored both centers of diversification and centers of immigration.

Keywords: Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau; Sinohimalayas; ancestral ranges; center of origin; immigration; in situ diversification.

© 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Conflict of interest statement

No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Passerine bird species of the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP); QTP endemics, wide distribution range on the plateau: (a) streaked rosefinch, Carpodacus rubicilloides; (b) robin accentor, Prunella rubeculoides; (c) rock sparrow, Petronia petronia, widespread trans‐Palearctic distribution; (d) Tibetan bunting, Emberiza koslowi, narrow‐range endemic of the QTP; all photos: M.P., Qinghai, China, June 2013

Figure 2

Figure 2

(a) Target region, the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (area 1) and the biodiversity hotspots along its forested margins (areas 2–5), modified from Favre et al. (2015); (b) phylogeny for 279 species of Passeroidea, five target clades representing five independent radiations involving QTP species marked in bold

Figure 3

Figure 3

Spatial distribution of species richness and diversity hotspots for all five target clades of Passeroidea; diversity heat maps were compiled with QGIS using shape files inferred from BirdLife International and NatureServe (2015) and from the IUCN Red List (2019); colors indicate regional species richness (high = red; low = dark blue)

Figure 4

Figure 4

“Out of Tibet” dispersal of snowfinches (Montifringilla, Onychostruthus, Pyrgilauda) and rock sparrows (Petronia), only the respective clade of the time‐calibrated Passeroidea MCC tree is shown; node support from Bayesian inference of phylogeny (BI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) indicated by symbols explained above the tree (no symbol for support values below 0.95/80); biogeographical reconstruction based on a dispersal–extinction–cladogenesis (DEC) model; letters at nodes show best states, pie charts show per‐area probabilities inferred from ARR2 (nine areas); main dispersal events sketched on the map including area codes (right); color codes for most frequent ancestral area combinations below map (right); extant patterns of sympatry on the QTP shown on maps below for (a) small snowfinches, three Pyrgilauda species and one Onychostruthus species (BirdLife International and NatureServe, 2015); (b) large species of Montifringilla (Asian distributions of M. nivalis and M. henrici according to Gebauer et al., 2006)

Figure 5

Figure 5

“Out of Himalaya” dispersal of rosefinches (Carpodacus; only the respective clade of the time‐calibrated Passeroidea MCC tree is shown); node support from Bayesian inference of phylogeny (BI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) indicated by symbols explained above the tree (no symbol for support values below 0.95/80); biogeographical reconstruction based on a dispersal–extinction–cladogenesis model (DEC); letters at nodes show best states, pie charts show per‐area probabilities inferred from ARR2 (nine areas); main dispersal events sketched on the map including area codes (right); color codes for most frequent ancestral area combinations below map (right)

Figure 6

Figure 6

“Out of Himalaya” dispersal of mountain finches (Leucosticte) and allies (only the respective clade of the time‐calibrated Passeroidea MCC tree is shown); node support from Bayesian inference of phylogeny (BI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) indicated by symbols explained above the tree (no symbol for support values below 0.95/80); biogeographical reconstruction based on a dispersal–extinction–cladogenesis model (DEC); letters at nodes show best states, pie charts show per‐area probabilities inferred from ARR2 (nine areas); main dispersal events sketched on the map including area codes (right); color codes for most frequent ancestral area combinations below map (right)

Figure 7

Figure 7

“Into Tibet” dispersal of Old World buntings (Emberiza, four clades I‐IV indicated in gray boxes; only the respective clade of the time‐calibrated Passeroidea MCC tree is shown); node support from Bayesian inference of phylogeny (BI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) indicated by symbols explained above the tree (no symbol for support values below 0.95/80); biogeographical reconstruction based on a dispersal–extinction–cladogenesis model (DEC); letters at nodes show best states, pie charts show per‐area probabilities inferred from ARR2 (nine areas); main dispersal events sketched on the map including area codes (right); color codes for most frequent ancestral area combinations below map (right)

Figure 8

Figure 8

“Out of Tibet” dispersal of accentors (Prunella; only the respective clade of the time‐calibrated Passeroidea MCC tree is shown); node support from Bayesian inference of phylogeny (BI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) indicated by symbols explained above the tree (no symbol for support values below 0.95/80); biogeographical reconstruction based on a dispersal–extinction–cladogenesis model (DEC); letters at nodes show best states, pie charts show per‐area probabilities inferred from ARR2 (nine areas; plus those from ARR1 with eight areas and less uncertainty at the three basal nodes); main dispersal events sketched on the map including area codes (right); color codes for most frequent ancestral area combinations below map (right)

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