The past, present, and future of ecogeographic isolation between closely related Aquilegia plants

• Published in: Ecology and evolution Vol. 13; no. 5; pp. e10098 - n/a
• Main Authors: Weng, Yulin, Li, Huiqiong, Yang, Jiqin, Zhang, Zhi‐Qiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.05.2023; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Aquilegia; Climate change; ecological niche models; Environment models; Evolutionary Ecology; General circulation models; Habitats; Holocene; Mountains; Precipitation; reproductive isolation; Speciation; Species; Variables; Sichuan Basin; Hengduan Mountains; Asia; North America; China; ecological niche models; reproductive isolation; climate change; speciation
• ISSN: 2045-7758; 2045-7758
• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.10098

Quantifying the strength of the ecogeographic barrier is an important aspect of plant speciation research, and serves as a practical step to understanding the evolutionary trajectory of plants under climate change. Here, we quantified the extent of ecogeographic isolation in four closely related Aquilegia species that radiated in the Mountains of SW China and adjacent regions, often lacking intrinsic barriers. We used environmental niche models to predict past, present, and future species potential distributions and compared them to determine the degree of overlap and ecogeographic isolation. Our investigation found significant ecological differentiation in all studied species pairs except A. kansuensis and A. ecalacarata. The current strengths of ecogeographic isolation are above 0.5 in most cases. Compared with current climates, most species had an expanding range in the Last Glacial Maximum, the Mid Holocene, and under four future climate scenarios. Our results suggested that ecogeographic isolation contributes to the diversification and maintenance of Aquilegia species in the Mountains of northern and SW China and would act as an essential reproductive barrier in the future. Ecogeographic isolation is an important reproductive barrier, but was rarely included as a component of reproductive isolation in previous studies. We found that ecogeographic isolation played a vital role in speciation and maintaining species boundaries in Aquilegia species.