Into the Himalayan exile: the phylogeography of the ground beetle Ethira clade supports the Tibetan origin of forest-dwelling Himalayan species groups.

ABSTRACT: The Himalayan mountain arc is one of the hotspots of biodiversity on earth, and species diversity is expected to be especially high among insects in this region. Little is known about the origin of the Himalayan insect fauna. With respect to the fauna of high altitude cloud forests, it has generally been accepted that Himalayan lineages are derived from ancestors that immigrated from Western Asia and from adjacent mountainous regions of East and Southeast Asia (immigration hypothesis). In this study, we sought to test a Tibetan Origin as an alternative hypothesis for groups with a poor dispersal ability through a phylogeographic analysis of the Ethira clade of the genus Pterostichus. We sequenced COI mtDNA and the 18S and 28S rDNA genes in 168 Pterostichini specimens, including 46 species

SUBMITTER: Schmidt J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3458877 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature