scholarly journals Sedimentary ancient DNA reveals a threat of warming-induced alpine habitat loss to Tibetan Plateau plant diversity

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sisi Liu ◽  
Stefan Kruse ◽  
Dirk Scherler ◽  
Richard H. Ree ◽  
Heike H. Zimmermann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Habitat Loss ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Livestock Grazing ◽  
Alpine Habitat ◽  
Taxa Richness ◽  
Alpine Habitats ◽  
Forest Belts ◽  
Time Series Approach ◽  
Total Plant

AbstractStudies along elevational gradients worldwide usually find the highest plant taxa richness in mid-elevation forest belts. Hence, an increase in upper elevation diversity is expected in the course of warming-related treeline rise. Here, we use a time-series approach to infer past taxa richness from sedimentary ancient DNA from the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau over the last ~18,000 years. We find the highest total plant taxa richness during the cool phase after glacier retreat when the area contained extensive and diverse alpine habitats (14–10 ka); followed by a decline when forests expanded during the warm early- to mid-Holocene (10–3.6 ka). Livestock grazing since 3.6 ka promoted plant taxa richness only weakly. Based on these inferred dependencies, our simulation yields a substantive decrease in plant taxa richness in response to warming-related alpine habitat loss over the next centuries. Accordingly, efforts of Tibetan biodiversity conservation should include conclusions from palaeoecological evidence.

scholarly journals The genus Hebeloma in the Rocky Mountain Alpine Zone

MycoKeys ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 1-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Cripps ◽  
Ursula Eberhardt ◽  
Nicole Schuetz ◽  
Henry Beker ◽  
Vera Evenson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Northern Hemisphere ◽  
Recent Progress ◽  
Rocky Mountain ◽  
Molecular Data ◽  
Morphological Features ◽  
Its Sequencing ◽  
Alpine Ecology ◽  
Alpine Habitat ◽  
Alpine Zone ◽  
Alpine Habitats

Numerous taxa ofHebelomahave been reported in association withSalix,Dryas, andBetulain arctic-alpine habitats. However, species are notoriously difficult to delineate because morphological features overlap, and previously there was little reliable molecular data available. Recent progress in ITS-sequencing within the genus, coupled with an extensive database of parametrically described collections, now allows comparisons between species and their distributions. Here we report 16 species ofHebelomafrom the Rocky Mountain alpine zone from some of the lowest latitudes (latitude 36°–45°N) and highest elevations (3000–4000 m) for arctic-alpine fungi in the northern hemisphere. Twelve of these species have been reported from arctic-alpine habitats in Europe and Greenland and are now molecularly confirmed from the Middle and Southern Rockies, greatly expanding their distribution. These are:Hebelomaalpinum,H.aurantioumbrinum,H.dunense,H.hiemale,H.marginatulum,H.mesophaeum,H.nigellum,H.oreophilum,H.subconcolor,H.spetsbergense,H.vaccinum, andH.velutipes. Hebelomahygrophilumis known from subalpine habitats in Europe, but was never recorded in arctic-alpine ecology. Three species recorded from the Rockies, but as yet not reported from Europe, areH.alpinicola,H.avellaneum, andH.excedens. The last two have never previously been reported from an arctic-alpine habitat. For all three of these species, the holotypes have been studied morphologically and molecularly, and have been incorporated into the analysis.

scholarly journals Reviews and syntheses: How do abiotic and biotic processes respond to climatic variations at the Nam Co catchment (Tibetan Plateau)?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sten Anslan ◽  
Mina Azizi Rad ◽  
Johannes Buckel ◽  
Paula Echeverria Galindo ◽  
Jinlei Kai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Livestock Grazing ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Nam Co ◽  
Climatic Fluctuations ◽  
Climatic Oscillations ◽  
Lake Nam Co

Abstract. The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is the largest alpine plateau on Earth and plays an important role in global climate dynamics. On the TP, climate change is happening particularly fast, with an increase in air temperature twice the global average. The particular sensitivity of this high mountainous environment allows the observation and tracking of abiotic and biotic feedback mechanisms. Closed lake systems, such as the Nam Co on the central TP represent important natural laboratories for tracking past and recent climatic oscillations, as well as geobiological processes and interactions within their respective catchments. This review gives an interdisciplinary overview of modern and paleoenvironmental changes, focusing on Nam Co as model system. In the catchment area, the steep rise in air temperature forced glaciers to melt, leading to a rise in lake levels and changes in water chemistry. Some studies base their conclusions on inconsistent glacier inventories but an ever-increasing deglaciation and thus higher water availability have persisted over the last decades. The enhanced water availability causes translocation of sediments, nutrients and dissolved organic matter to the lake, as well as higher carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The intensity of grazing has a significant effect on CO2 fluxes, with moderate grazing enhancing belowground allocation of carbon while adversely affecting the C-sink potential through reduction of above- and subsurface biomass at higher grazing intensities. Furthermore, increasing pressure from human activities and livestock grazing are enhancing grassland degradation processes, thus shaping biodiversity patterns in the lake and catchment. The environmental signal provided by taxon-specific analysis (e.g. diatoms and ostracods) in Nam Co have revealed profound climatic fluctuations between warmer/cooler and wetter/drier periods since the late Pleistocene and an increasing input of freshwater and nutrients from the catchment in recent years. Based on the reviewed literature, we outline perspectives to further understand the effects of global warming on geo- and biodiversity and their interplay in the Lake Nam Co, which acts as a case study for potentially TP-wide processes that are currently shaping the earth’s future.

scholarly journals The Genomic Formation of Human Populations in East Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuan-Chao Wang ◽  
Hui-Yuan Yeh ◽  
Alexander N Popov ◽  
Hu-Qin Zhang ◽  
Hirofumi Matsumura ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
East Asia ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Western China ◽  
Amur River Basin ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Amur River ◽  
The Amur River

The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood due to a lack of ancient DNA data and sparse sampling of present-day people. We report genome-wide data from 191 individuals from Mongolia, northern China, Taiwan, the Amur River Basin and Japan dating to 6000 BCE – 1000 CE, many from contexts never previously analyzed with ancient DNA. We also report 383 present-day individuals from 46 groups mostly from the Tibetan Plateau and southern China. We document how 6000-3600 BCE people of Mongolia and the Amur River Basin were from populations that expanded over Northeast Asia, likely dispersing the ancestors of Mongolic and Tungusic languages. In a time transect of 89 Mongolians, we reveal how Yamnaya steppe pastoralist spread from the west by 3300-2900 BCE in association with the Afanasievo culture, although we also document a boy buried in an Afanasievo barrow with ancestry entirely from local Mongolian hunter-gatherers, representing a unique case of someone of entirely non-Yamnaya ancestry interred in this way. The second spread of Yamnaya-derived ancestry came via groups that harbored about a third of their ancestry from European farmers, which nearly completely displaced unmixed Yamnaya-related lineages in Mongolia in the second millennium BCE, but did not replace Afanasievo lineages in western China where Afanasievo ancestry persisted, plausibly acting as the source of the early-splitting Tocharian branch of Indo-European languages. Analyzing 20 Yellow River Basin farmers dating to ∼3000 BCE, we document a population that was a plausible vector for the spread of Sino-Tibetan languages both to the Tibetan Plateau and to the central plain where they mixed with southern agriculturalists to form the ancestors of Han Chinese. We show that the individuals in a time transect of 52 ancient Taiwan individuals spanning at least 1400 BCE to 600 CE were consistent with being nearly direct descendants of Yangtze Valley first farmers who likely spread Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic languages across Southeast and South Asia and mixing with the people they encountered, contributing to a four-fold reduction of genetic differentiation during the emergence of complex societies. We finally report data from Jomon hunter-gatherers from Japan who harbored one of the earliest splitting branches of East Eurasian variation, and show an affinity among Jomon, Amur River Basin, ancient Taiwan, and Austronesian-speakers, as expected for ancestry if they all had contributions from a Late Pleistocene coastal route migration to East Asia.

scholarly journals Rapid loss of genetic variation in an endangered possum

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Mitrovski ◽  
A.A Hoffmann ◽  
D.A Heinze ◽  
A.R Weeks
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Snow Cover ◽  
Habitat Loss ◽  
Rapid Loss ◽  
Alpine Habitat ◽  
Ski Resort ◽  
Resort Development ◽  
Australian Marsupial

The endangered mountain pygmy possum is the only Australian marsupial that hibernates under snow cover. Most of its alpine habitat was burnt by a rare fire in 2003, and habitat loss and disturbance have also occurred owing to ski resort development. Here we show that there has been a rapid loss of genetic variation following habitat loss associated with resort development, but no detectable loss of alleles or decrease in heterozygosity following the fire.

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