Schmidt Joachim, Böhner Jürgen, Brandl Roland, Opgenoorth Lars
Institut für Biowissenschaften, Allgemeine und Spezielle Zoologie, Universität Rostock, Universitätsplatz 2, Rostock, Germany.
Department of Ecology, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Karl-von-Frisch Strasse, Marburg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2017 Mar 24;12(3):e0172939. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0172939. eCollection 2017.
Mass elevation and lee effects markedly influence snow lines and tree lines in high mountain systems. However, their impact on other phenomena or groups of organisms has not yet been quantified. Here we quantitatively studied their influence in the Himalaya-Tibet orogen on the distribution of ground beetles as model organisms, specifically whether the ground beetle distribution increases from the outer to the inner parts of the orogen, against latitudinal effects. We also tested whether July temperature and solar radiation are predictors of the beetle's elevational distribution ranges. Finally, we discussed the general importance of these effects for the distributional and evolutionary history of the biota of High Asia. We modelled spatially explicit estimates of variables characterizing temperature and solar radiation and correlated the variables with the respective lower elevational range of 118 species of ground beetles from 76 high-alpine locations. Both July temperature and solar radiation significantly positively correlated with the elevational ranges of high-alpine beetles. Against the latitudinal trend, the median elevation of the respective species distributions increased by 800 m from the Himalayan south face north to the Transhimalaya. Our results indicate that an increase in seasonal temperature due to mass elevation and lee effects substantially impact the regional distribution patterns of alpine ground beetles of the Himalaya-Tibet orogen and are likely to affect also other soil biota there and in mountain ranges worldwide. Since these effects must have changed during orogenesis, their potential impact must be considered when biogeographic scenarios based on geological models are derived. As this has not been the practice, we believe that large biases likely exist in many paleoecological and evolutionary studies dealing with the biota from the Himalaya-Tibet orogen and mountain ranges worldwide.
山体隆升和背风效应显著影响高山系统中的雪线和林线。然而，它们对其他现象或生物群体的影响尚未得到量化。在此，我们定量研究了它们在喜马拉雅 - 西藏造山带对作为模式生物的步甲分布的影响，具体而言，步甲分布是否会逆着纬度效应从造山带外部向内部增加。我们还测试了七月温度和太阳辐射是否是步甲海拔分布范围的预测因子。最后，我们讨论了这些效应对于亚洲中部生物群的分布和进化历史的普遍重要性。我们对表征温度和太阳辐射的变量进行了空间明确的估计，并将这些变量与来自76个高海拔地点的118种步甲各自的低海拔范围进行了关联。七月温度和太阳辐射均与高海拔步甲的海拔范围显著正相关。逆着纬度趋势，各物种分布的中位海拔从喜马拉雅山南面向北到藏北高原增加了800米。我们的结果表明，由于山体隆升和背风效应导致的季节性温度升高，对喜马拉雅 - 西藏造山带高山步甲的区域分布格局产生了重大影响，并且可能也会影响那里以及全球山脉中的其他土壤生物群。由于这些效应在造山过程中必定发生了变化，因此在基于地质模型推导生物地理情景时，必须考虑它们的潜在影响。由于目前尚未这么做，我们认为在许多涉及喜马拉雅 - 西藏造山带及全球山脉生物群的古生态和进化研究中可能存在很大偏差。
