Páramo is the world's fastest evolving and coolest biodiversity hotspot

Abstract

Understanding the processes that cause speciation is a key aim of evolutionary biology. Lineages or biomes that exhibit recent and rapid diversification are ideal model systems for determining these processes. Species rich biomes reported to be of relatively recent origin, i.e., since the beginning of the Miocene, include Mediterranean ecosystems such as the California Floristic Province, oceanic islands such as the Hawaiian archipelago and the Neotropical high elevation ecosystem of the Páramos. Páramos constitute grasslands above the forest tree-line (at elevations of c. 2800–4700 m) with high species endemism. Organisms that occupy this ecosystem are a likely product of unique adaptations to an extreme environment that evolved during the last three to five million years when the Andes reached an altitude that was capable of sustaining this type of vegetation. We compared net diversification rates of lineages in fast evolving biomes using 73 dated molecular phylogenies. Based on our sample, we demonstrate that average net diversification rates of Páramo plant lineages are faster than those of other reportedly fast evolving hotspots and that the faster evolving lineages are more likely to be found in Páramos than the other hotspots. Páramos therefore represent the ideal model system for studying diversification processes. Most of the speciation events that we observed in the Páramos (144 out of 177) occurred during the Pleistocene possibly due to the effects of species range contraction and expansion that may have resulted from the well-documented climatic changes during that period. Understanding these effects will assist with efforts to determine how future climatic changes will impact plant populations.

The emerging field of geogenomics: Constraining geological problems with genetic data

“…Diversification within the páramo started between 3 and 6 Ma for birds (Quintero et al, 2012); current species of both plants and birds originated in the last 1 Myr (Ribas et al, 2007;Quintero et al, 2012;Saerkinen et al, 2012;Madriñan et al, 2013). This evidence suggests that initial diversification of the studied páramo clades is consistent with a recent origin of the páramo biomes, although the origin of contemporary clades may reflect climate change within already uplifted highlands.…”

Uplift-driven diversification in the Hengduan Mountains, a temperate biodiversity hotspot

“…Assembly of the Cerrado biome in Brazil has been characterized by recent (late Miocene onward) in situ adaptation of lineages to fire resistance (54), with some clades, especially in the campos rupestres highlands, showing evidence of endemic radiation [e.g., Mimosa (54,55), Calliandra (56), and Chamaecrista (57)]. In the Páramo biome of the Andes, analyses of net diversification (but not immigration) yielded the highest average rate compared with eight other hotspots and appear driven more by Pleistocene climate oscillations than orogeny (58). Clearly, for the Hengduan Mountains, much remains to be studied about how patterns of assembly through time break down at a finer scale of particular biomes and habitats within the region.…”

Land‐Use and Land‐Cover Change in the Páramo of South‐Central Ecuador, 1979–2014

“…They are areas of high biological diversity and plant endemism [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]; and provide a wide range of ecosystem benefits, particularly those related to the water cycle and carbon storage [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Approximately 10 million people live in the Northern Andean páramo and the socio-economic decisions they make lead to a wide range of land uses and transitional pathways between land uses.…”