The enigmatic tropical alpine flora on the African sky islands is young, disturbed, and unsaturated.

ABSTRACT: Tropical alpine floras are renowned for high endemism, spectacular giant rosette plants testifying to convergent adaptation to harsh climates with nightly frosts, and recruitment dominated by long-distance dispersal from remote areas. In contrast to the larger, more recent (late Miocene onward) and contiguous expanses of tropical alpine habitat in South America, the tropical alpine flora in Africa is extremely fragmented across small patches on distant mountains of variable age (Oligocene onward). How this has affected the colonization and diversification history of the highly endemic but species-poor afroalpine flora is not well known. Here we infer phylogenetic relationships of ∼20% of its species using novel genome skimming data and published matrices and infer a timeframe for species o

SUBMITTER: Kandziora M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9295768 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature