Late Quaternary fluctuation in upper range limit of trees shapes endemic flora diversity on the Tibetan Plateau

Jinfeng Xu, Tao Wang (), Xiaoyi Wang, Christian Körner, Xianyong Cao, Eryuan Liang, Yongping Yang and Shilong Piao
Additional contact information
Jinfeng Xu: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Tao Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiaoyi Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Christian Körner: University of Basel
Xianyong Cao: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Eryuan Liang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yongping Yang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shilong Piao: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract The influence of paleoclimate in shaping current biodiversity pattern is widely acknowledged. However, it remains unclear how the upper paleo-range limit of trees, which dictated the habitat of endemic alpine species, affects the variability in endemic alpine species composition across space over the Tibetan Plateau. We integrated satellite-derived upper range limit of trees, dendrochronological data, and fossil pollen records with a paleoclimate dataset in a climate-driven predictive model to reconstruct the spatio-temporal upper range limit of trees at 100-year intervals since the Last Glacial Maximum. Our results show that trees distributed at the lowest elevations during the Last Glacial Maximum (~3426 m), and ascended to the highest elevations during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (~4187 m), a level ~180 m higher than the present-day (~4009 m). The temporal fluctuations in paleo-range limits of trees play a more important role than paleoclimate in shaping the current spatial pattern of beta-diversity of endemic flora, with regions witnessing higher fluctuations having lower beta-diversity. We therefore suggest that anthropogenic-caused climate change on decadal-to-centennial timescales could lead to higher fluctuations in range limits than orbitally-forced climate variability on centennial-to-millennium timescales, which consequently could cause spatial homogenization of endemic alpine species composition, threatening Tibetan endemic species pool.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57036-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-57036-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57036-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().