Professor Jianquan Liu with his team of Lanzhou University was invited to publish a Tansley review in New Phytologist on plant speciation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) sensu lato (sl), comprising the platform, the Himalaya, and the Hengduan Mountains (Fig. 1). Known as the “Roof of the World”, this region has the highest (average elevation > 4 km) and the most extensive range (> 2.5 million km2) on Earth. In fact, more than 20% of the 12,000 species of vascular plants that call the Plateau home are found nowhere else in the world. How this "evolutionary cradle" on the QTP sl was formed has long attracted scientists from both evolutionary biology and ecology.
Recently, Prof. Jianquan Liu and his team of Lanzhou University published a Tansley review entitled “Species divergence with gene flow and hybrid speciation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau” in the New Phytologist, which summarized the recent advances in plant speciation on the QTP sl, and discussed the important role of hybridization in plant speciation on the QTP sl based on comprehensive and detailed evidence. The authors stated that isolation, selection and hybridization could have together promoted species diversification of numerous plant genera on the QTP sl (Fig. 2). Further research directions in this field are also prospected in this review. Prof. Jianquan Liu with his team has been engaged in the study of the speciation mechanism on the QTP sl, and has carried out a series of systematic and in-depth investigations in this field.
Fig. 1 The circumscription and uplift histories of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau sensu lato (QTP sl).
Figure. 2 The likely drivers for species diversification on
the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau sensu lato (QTP sl).
Prof. Jianquan Liu is the corresponding author of the review. Young Researcher Shengdan Wu of Lanzhou University and Ph.D. student Yi Wang of Sichuan University are the co-first authors of the review. The research was supported by the Strategic Priority Science and Technology Special Project of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the second Scientific Expedition to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The article links: https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.17956
Link to New Phytologist's video coverage dedicated to the study: