Flying between sky islands: the effect of naturally fragmented habitat on butterfly population structure.

ABSTRACT: High elevation montane areas are called "sky islands" when they occur as a series of high mountains separated by lowland valleys. Different climatic conditions at high elevations makes sky islands a specialized type of habitat, rendering them naturally fragmented compared to more continuous habitat at lower elevations. Species in sky islands face unsuitable climate in the intervening valleys when moving from one montane area to another. The high elevation shola-grassland mosaic in the Western Ghats of southern India form one such sky island complex. The fragmented patches make this area ideal to study the effect of the spatial orientation of suitable habitat patches on population genetic structure of species found in these areas. Past studies have suggested that sky islands tend to have ge

SUBMITTER: Sekar S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3731288 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature