Evolution of endemism on a young tropical mountain

Author 

• Vincent S. F. T. Merckx,
• Kasper P. Hendriks,
• Kevin K. Beentjes,
• Constantijn B. Mennes,
• Leontine E. Becking,
• Katja T. C. A. Peijnenburg,
• Aqilah Afendy,
• Nivaarani Arumugam,
• Hugo de Boer,
• Alim Biun,
• Matsain M. Buang,
• Ping-Ping Chen,
• Arthur Y. C. Chung,
• Rory Dow,
• Frida A. A. Feijen,
• Hans Feijen,
• Cobi Feijen-van Soest,
• József Geml,
• René Geurts,
• Barbara Gravendeel,
• Peter Hovenkamp,
• Paul Imbun,
• Isa Ipor,
• Steven B. Janssens,
• Merlijn Jocqué
• et al.

• Affiliations
• Contributions
• Corresponding author

Nature

 

524,

 

347–350

 

(20 August 2015)

 

doi:10.1038/nature14949

Received

 

09 December 2014 

Accepted

 

14 July 2015 

Published online

 

12 August 2015

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Tropical mountains are hot spots of biodiversity and endemism^1, 2, 3, but the evolutionary origins of their unique biotas are poorly understood⁴. In varying degrees, local and regional extinction, long-distance colonization, and local recruitment may all contribute to the exceptional character of these communities⁵. Also, it is debated whether mountain endemics mostly originate from local lowland taxa, or from lineages that reach the mountain by long-range dispersal from cool localities elsewhere⁶. Here we investigate the evolutionary routes to endemism by sampling an entire tropical mountain biota on the 4,095-metre-high Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, East Malaysia. We discover that most of its unique biodiversity is younger than the mountain itself (6 million years), and comprises a mix of immigrant pre-adapted lineages and descendants from local lowland ancestors, although substantial shifts from lower to higher vegetation zones in this latter group were rare. These insights could improve forecasts of the likelihood of extinction and ‘evolutionary rescue’⁷ in montane biodiversity hot spots under climate change scenarios.

Subject terms:

• Tropical ecology
• Systematics

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