Journal
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
Volume 27, Issue 8, Pages 913-924Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/geb.12750
Keywords
ancestral area reconstruction; evolutionary history; habitat heterogeneity; into-the-tropics; species richness; time-for-speciation; tropical mountains
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research Development Program of China [2017YFA0605101]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31650110471, 31522012, 31470564, 31621091]
- 111 Project [B14001]
- Chinese Academy of Sciences-Peking University Pioneer Collaboration Team
- Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities [YJ201721]
- Danish National Research Foundation [DNRF96]
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Aim: Understanding the evolution of the latitudinal diversity gradient (i.e. increase in species diversity towards the tropics) is a prominent issue in ecology and biogeography. Disentangling the relative contributions of environment and evolutionary history in shaping this gradient remains a major challenge because their relative importance has been found to vary across regions and taxa. Here, using the global distributions and a molecular phylogeny of Rhododendron, one of the largest genera of flowering plants, we aim to compare the relative contributions of contemporary environment, evolutionary time and diversification rates in generating extant species diversity patterns. Location: Global. Time period: Undefined. Major taxa studied: Rhododendron. Methods: We compiled the global distributions of all Rhododendron species, and constructed a dated molecular phylogeny using nine chloroplast genes and seven nuclear regions. By integrating these two datasets, we estimated the temporal trends of Rhododendron diversification, and explored the global patterns of its species diversity, net diversification rates, and species ages. Next, we reconstructed the geographical ancestral area of the clade. Finally, we compared the relative contribution of contemporary environment, time-for-speciation, and diversification rates on the species diversity pattern of Rhododendron. Results: In contrast to the predictions of the time-for-speciation hypothesis, we found that although Rhododendron originated at a temperate latitude, its contemporary species diversity is highest in the tropics/subtropics, suggesting an into-the-tropics colonization for this genus. We found that the elevated diversification induced by heterogeneous environmental conditions in the tropics/subtropics shapes the global pattern of Rhododendron diversity. Main conclusions: Our findings support tropical and subtropical mountains as not only biodiversity and endemism hotspots, but also as cradles for the diversification of Rhododendron. Our study emphasizes the need of unifying ecological and evolutionary approaches in order to gain comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms underlying the global patterns of plant diversity.
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