Refugia persistence of Qinghai-Tibetan plateau by the cold-tolerant bird Tetraogallus tibetanus (Galliformes: Phasianidae).

ABSTRACT: Most of the temperate species are expected to have moved to lower altitudes during the glacial periods of the Quaternary. Here we tested this hypothesis in a cold-tolerant avian species Tibetan snowcock (Tetraogallus tibetanus) using two segments of mitochondrial gene (a 705bp Cytochrome-b; abbrev. Cyt-b and an 854 bp Control Region; abbrev. CR) and eight microsatellite loci by characterizing population differentiation and gene flow across its range. Combined (Cyt-b + CR) datasets detected several partially lineages with poor support. Microsatellite data, however, identified two distinct lineages congruent with the geographically separated western and central regions of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). The phylogeographic patterns that we observed might be explained by a combination of vicar

SUBMITTER: An B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4378977 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature