title: Warm-cold colonization: response of oaks to uplift of the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains.
abstract: Clarifying the relationship between distribution patterns of organisms and geological events is critical to understanding the impact of environmental changes on organismal evolution. Quercus sect. Heterobalanus is now distributed across the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains (HHM) and warm lowland in East China, yet how the distribution patterns of this group changed in response to the HHM uplift remains largely unknown. This study examines the effect of tectonic events in the HHM region on the oaks, providing a biological perspective on the geological history of this region. Fifty-six populations of Quercus sect. Heterobalanus were genotyped using four chloroplast DNA regions and nine nuclear simple sequence repeat loci to assess population structure and diversity, supplemented by molecular dating and ancestral area reconstructions. The underlying demographic dynamics were compared using ecological niche models of the species distributions during the last glacial maximum and the present. These analyses illustrate that Quercus sect. Heterobalanus diversified as the HHM uplifted and climatic cooling during the mid-Miocene, colonizing the cold habitats from warm broadleaf mixed forests. Lineages in cold highlands and warm lowlands have diverged as a consequence of local adaptation to diverging climates since the late Miocene. Our results suggest that continuous uplift of the HHM in the late Miocene to early Pliocene accompanied by simultaneous cooling triggered the differentiation of oaks. The biogeography of Quercus sect. Heterobalanus illuminates the geological events responsible for the modern-day HHM.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, 666303, China.|Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650223, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
authors.forename: Hong-Hu
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, 666303, China.
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Tropical Plant Resources and Sustainable Use, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, 666303, China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Yang
authors.initials: XY
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650223, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Shanghai Chenshan Plant Science Research Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201602, China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Long
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650204, China.
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, 666303, China.|Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650204, China.
authors.forename: Zhe-Kun
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0710-2128
authors.initials: ZK
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D018742:DNA, Chloroplast / Q000235:genetics; D017753:Ecosystem; D055593:Geological Phenomena; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D010802:Phylogeny; D058974:Phylogeography; D063148:Plant Dispersal; D029963:Quercus / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D018742:DNA, Chloroplast
keywords: Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains; Quercus sect. Heterobalanus; ancestral area reconstruction; colonization; ecological niche modelling; geological evolution; phylogeography