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Systematics, Evolution and Biogeography of Mountain Plants
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Systematics, Evolution and Biogeography of Mountain Plants

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Systematics, Taxonomy, Nomenclature and Classification".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2023) | Viewed by 11221

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Cristina Roquet Ruiz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Unitat de Botànica, Departament de Biologia Animal, Biologia Vegetal i Ecologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Interests: plant evolution; phylogenetics; phylogeography; phylogenetic comparative methods; alpine plants; Mediterranean plants; Campanulaceae; Asteraceae; Primulaceae
Dr. Mario Mairal

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Departamento de Biodiversidad, Ecología y Evolución (Unidad de Botánica), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 280040 Madrid, Spain
Interests: biodiversity; biogeography; phylogeography; evolutionary biology; systematics; plants; islands

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Mountain regions across the world have long attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists because they harbor outstanding levels of biodiversity and endemism in comparison with surrounding lowlands. From a biogeographic point of view, they are also of significant interest because alpine biomes are often highly isolated, constituting fragmented systems of "sky islands". Mountain floras are expected to be particularly affected by climate change, reducing the area of favorable habitats for alpine species with potential detrimental consequences for mountain ecosystems. It is thus crucial to enhance our understanding of the biodiversity of mountain biomes and their underlying evolutionary mechanisms and biogeographic processes in order to improve our capacity to protect them. Improving the systematic knowledge of mountain plant groups is also of high importance because such studies provide the evolutionary framework needed for any biological study. Moreover, systematic studies often have taxonomic implications regarding species delineation, a particularly important issue given that species are the operational unit of conservation practice and management.

This Special Issue of Plants will focus on the systematics, evolution and biogeography of mountain plants. The following types of studies are welcomed in this Special Issue: studies aimed to improve the systematics of mountain plant groups; case studies on the evolution and/or the biogeographic history of mountain plant lineages; and general overviews, i.e., reviews and theoretical syntheses on the evolutionary and/or biogeographic processes underlying mountain plant biodiversity.

Dr. Cristina Roquet Ruiz
Dr. Mario Mairal
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • alpine plants and ecosystems
  • plant evolution
  • plant systematics
  • historic biogeography
  • origins of biodiversity

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 4715 KiB  
Article
African Mountain Thistles: Three New Genera in the Carduus-Cirsium Group
by Lucía D. Moreyra, Núria Garcia-Jacas, Cristina Roquet, Jennifer R. Ackerfield, Turan Arabacı, Carme Blanco-Gavaldà, Christian Brochmann, Juan Antonio Calleja, Tuncay Dirmenci, Kazumi Fujikawa, Mercè Galbany-Casals, Tiangang Gao, Abel Gizaw, Javier López-Alvarado, Iraj Mehregan, Roser Vilatersana, Bayram Yıldız, Frederik Leliaert, Alexey P. Seregin and Alfonso Susanna
Plants 2023, 12(17), 3083; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12173083 - 28 Aug 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2075
Abstract
The floras on the highest mountains in tropical eastern Africa are among the most unique floras in the world. Despite the exceptionally high concentration of endemic species, these floras remain understudied from an evolutionary point of view. In this study, we focus on [...] Read more.
The floras on the highest mountains in tropical eastern Africa are among the most unique floras in the world. Despite the exceptionally high concentration of endemic species, these floras remain understudied from an evolutionary point of view. In this study, we focus on the Carduus-Cirsium group (subtribe Carduinae) to unravel the evolutionary relationships of the species endemic to the tropical Afromontane and Afroalpine floras, aiming to improve the systematics of the group. We applied the Hyb-Seq approach using the Compositae1061 probe set on 190 samples (159 species), encompassing representatives of all genera of Carduinae. We used two recently developed pipelines that enabled the processing of raw sequence reads, identification of paralogous sequences and segregation into orthologous alignments. After the implementation of a missing data filter, we retained sequences from 986 nuclear loci and 177 plastid regions. Phylogenomic analyses were conducted using both concatenated and summary-coalescence methods. The resulting phylogenies were highly resolved and revealed three distinct evolutionary lineages consisting of the African species traditionally referred to as Carduus and Cirsium. Consequently, we propose the three new genera Afrocarduus, Afrocirsium and Nuriaea; the latter did notably not belong to the Carduus-Cirsium group. We detected some incongruences between the phylogenies based on concatenation vs. coalescence and on nuclear vs. plastid datasets, likely attributable to incomplete lineage sorting and/or hybridization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Systematics, Evolution and Biogeography of Mountain Plants)
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23 pages, 3070 KiB  
Article
Are Mediterranean Island Mountains Hotspots of Taxonomic and Phylogenetic Biodiversity? The Case of the Endemic Flora of the Balearic Islands
by Moisès Guardiola and Llorenç Sáez
Plants 2023, 12(14), 2640; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12142640 - 13 Jul 2023
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2657
Abstract
The Mediterranean islands are exceptionally rich in endemism, most of which is narrowly distributed. Conservation measures, such as protected areas, have been prioritised, mainly on the basis of species richness and endemism, but phylogenetic information should also be taken into account. In this [...] Read more.
The Mediterranean islands are exceptionally rich in endemism, most of which is narrowly distributed. Conservation measures, such as protected areas, have been prioritised, mainly on the basis of species richness and endemism, but phylogenetic information should also be taken into account. In this study, we calculated several taxonomic and phylogenetic metrics at a high resolution for the endemic flora of the Balearic Islands (154 taxa), in order to identify (i) the spatial patterns and environmental factors that explain this endemism, (ii) hotspots of species and phylogenetic endemism, and (iii) gaps in the protected areas. The taxonomic and phylogenetic metrics showed different distribution patterns, but the mountainous areas of Mallorca, and some coastal areas of the Balearic Islands, have the highest values. These values were positively related to elevation, precipitation, temperature, and slope, and negatively related to the distance from the coast, aspect, and the temperature of the wettest quarter. We identified top grid hotspots where all the metrics had the highest values, and we also identified nano-hotspots within these hotspots, in some of the highest peaks of Mallorca, where most of these metrics’ maximum values coincided. This approach allowed us to identify some gaps in the conservation priority areas, and to highlight the need to review their boundaries and definition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Systematics, Evolution and Biogeography of Mountain Plants)
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24 pages, 2963 KiB  
Article
Repeatedly Northwards and Upwards: Southern African Grasslands Fuel the Colonization of the African Sky Islands in Helichrysum (Compositae)
by Carme Blanco-Gavaldà, Mercè Galbany-Casals, Alfonso Susanna, Santiago Andrés-Sánchez, Randall J. Bayer, Christian Brochmann, Glynis V. Cron, Nicola G. Bergh, Núria Garcia-Jacas, Abel Gizaw, Martha Kandziora, Filip Kolář, Javier López-Alvarado, Frederik Leliaert, Rokiman Letsara, Lucía D. Moreyra, Sylvain G. Razafimandimbison, Roswitha Schmickl and Cristina Roquet
Plants 2023, 12(11), 2213; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12112213 - 3 Jun 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3677
Abstract
The Afromontane and Afroalpine areas constitute some of the main biodiversity hotspots of Africa. They are particularly rich in plant endemics, but the biogeographic origins and evolutionary processes leading to this outstanding diversity are poorly understood. We performed phylogenomic and biogeographic analyses of [...] Read more.
The Afromontane and Afroalpine areas constitute some of the main biodiversity hotspots of Africa. They are particularly rich in plant endemics, but the biogeographic origins and evolutionary processes leading to this outstanding diversity are poorly understood. We performed phylogenomic and biogeographic analyses of one of the most species-rich plant genera in these mountains, Helichrysum (Compositae-Gnaphalieae). Most previous studies have focused on Afroalpine elements of Eurasian origin, and the southern African origin of Helichrysum provides an interesting counterexample. We obtained a comprehensive nuclear dataset from 304 species (≈50% of the genus) using target-enrichment with the Compositae1061 probe set. Summary-coalescent and concatenation approaches combined with paralog recovery yielded congruent, well-resolved phylogenies. Ancestral range estimations revealed that Helichrysum originated in arid southern Africa, whereas the southern African grasslands were the source of most lineages that dispersed within and outside Africa. Colonization of the tropical Afromontane and Afroalpine areas occurred repeatedly throughout the Miocene–Pliocene. This timing coincides with mountain uplift and the onset of glacial cycles, which together may have facilitated both speciation and intermountain gene flow, contributing to the evolution of the Afroalpine flora. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Systematics, Evolution and Biogeography of Mountain Plants)
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15 pages, 3295 KiB  
Article
Disentangling Relationships among the Alpine Species of Luzula Sect. Luzula (Juncaceae) in the Eastern Alps
by Špela Pungaršek, Jasna Dolenc Koce, Martina Bačič, Michael H. J. Barfuss, Peter Schönswetter and Božo Frajman
Plants 2023, 12(4), 973; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12040973 - 20 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2054
Abstract
Polyploidisation, agmatoploidy and symploidy have driven the diversification of Luzula sect. Luzula. Several morphologically very similar species with different karyotypes have evolved, but their evolutionary origins and relationships are unknown. In this study, we used a combination of relative genome size and [...] Read more.
Polyploidisation, agmatoploidy and symploidy have driven the diversification of Luzula sect. Luzula. Several morphologically very similar species with different karyotypes have evolved, but their evolutionary origins and relationships are unknown. In this study, we used a combination of relative genome size and karyotype estimations as well amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprinting to investigate the relationships among predominately (sub)alpine Luzula alpina, L. exspectata, L multiflora and L. sudetica in the Eastern Alps, including also some samples of L. campestris and L. taurica as outgroup. Our study revealed common co-occurrence of two or three different ploidies (di-, tetra- and hexaploids) at the same localities, and thus also common co-occurrence of different species, of which L. sudetica was morphologically, ecologically and genetically most divergent. Whereas agmatoploid L. exspectata likely originated only once from the Balkan L. taurica, and hexaploid L. multiflora once from tetraploid L. multiflora, the AFLP data suggest multiple origins of tetraploid L. multiflora, from which partly agmatoploid individuals of L. alpina likely originated recurrently by partial fragmentation of the chromosomes. In contrast to common recurrent formation of polyploids in flowering plants, populations of agmatoploids resulting by fission of complete chromosome sets appear to have single origins, whereas partial agmatoploids are formed recurrently. Whether this is a general pattern in Luzula sect. Luzula, and whether segregation of ecological niches supports the frequent co-occurrence of closely related cytotypes in mixed populations, remains the subject of ongoing research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Systematics, Evolution and Biogeography of Mountain Plants)
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