J Integr Plant Biol ›› 2024, Vol. 66 ›› Issue (6): 1192-1205.DOI: 10.1111/jipb.13663

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  • 收稿日期:2024-01-23 接受日期:2024-03-26 出版日期:2024-06-01 发布日期:2024-06-25

Pleistocene glaciation advances the cryptic speciation of Stellera chamaejasme L. in a major biodiversity hotspot

Santosh Kumar Rana1,2, Hum Kala Rana1, Jacob B. Landis3,4, Tianhui Kuang1, Juntong Chen1, Hengchang Wang5, Tao Deng1*, Charles C. Davis6* and Hang Sun1*   

  1. 1. CAS Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650201, China;
    2. Arkansas Biosciences Institute, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401, USA;
    3. School of Integrative Plant Science, Section of Plant Biology and the L.H. Bailey Hortorium, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA;
    4. BTI Computational Biology Center, Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA;
    5. CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Wuhan 430074, China;
    6. Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Herbaria, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
    *Correspondences: Hang Sun (sunhang@mail.kib.ac.cn); Charles C. Davis (cdavis@oeb.harvard.edu); Tao Deng (dengtao@mail.kib.ac.cn, Prof. Sun is fully responsible for the distribution of all materials associated with this article)
  • Received:2024-01-23 Accepted:2024-03-26 Online:2024-06-01 Published:2024-06-25

Abstract: The mountains of Southwest China comprise a significant large mountain range and biodiversity hotspot imperiled by global climate change. The high species diversity in this mountain system has long been attributed to a complex set of factors, and recent large-scale macroevolutionary investigations have placed a broad timeline on plant diversification that stretches from 10 million years ago (Mya) to the present. Despite our increasing understanding of the temporal mode of speciation, finer-scale population-level investigations are lacking to better refine these temporal trends and illuminate the abiotic and biotic influences of cryptic speciation. This is largely due to the dearth of organismal sampling among closely related species and populations, spanning the incredible size and topological heterogeneity of this region. Our study dives into these evolutionary dynamics of speciation using genomic and eco-morphological data of Stellera chamaejasme L. We identified four previously unrecognized cryptic species having indistinct morphological traits and large metapopulation of evolving lineages, suggesting a more recent diversification (~2.67-0.90 Mya), largely influenced by Pleistocene glaciation and biotic factors. These factors likely influenced allopatric speciation and advocated cyclical warming-cooling episodes along elevational gradients during the Pleistocene. The study refines the evolutionary timeline to be much younger than previously implicated and raises the concern that projected future warming may influence the alpine species diversity, necessitating increased conservation efforts.

Key words: cryptic speciation, glacial-interglacial, Hengduan Mountains, north-south migration, Stellera chamaejasme

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