Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 May 27;11(1):11128.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-90612-w.

Discovery of cryptic plant diversity on the rooftops of the Alps

Florian C Boucher  1 , Cédric Dentant  2   3 , Sébastien Ibanez  4 , Thibaut Capblancq  4   5 , Martí Boleda  4 , Louise Boulangeat  4 , Jan Smyčka  4   6 , Cristina Roquet  4   7 , Sébastien Lavergne  4
Affiliations

Discovery of cryptic plant diversity on the rooftops of the Alps

Florian C Boucher et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

High elevation temperate mountains have long been considered species poor owing to high extinction or low speciation rates during the Pleistocene. We performed a phylogenetic and population genomic investigation of an emblematic high-elevation plant clade (Androsace sect. Aretia, 31 currently recognized species), based on plant surveys conducted during alpinism expeditions. We inferred that this clade originated in the Miocene and continued diversifying through Pleistocene glaciations, and discovered three novel species of Androsace dwelling on different bedrock types on the rooftops of the Alps. This highlights that temperate high mountains have been cradles of plant diversity even during the Pleistocene, with in-situ speciation driven by the combined action of geography and geology. Our findings have an unexpected historical relevance: H.-B. de Saussure likely observed one of these species during his 1788 expedition to the Mont Blanc and we describe it here, over two hundred years after its first sighting.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Geographic distribution of samples used for the phylogenomic analysis of Androsace sect. Aretia. The background map shows elevation in shades of grey and was drawn using the R package raster. (B) Maximum-likelihood phylogeny of Androsace sect. Aretia based on the concatenation of 2700 ddRAD tags together totaling 314,363 bp, and dated using penalized likelihood with secondary calibration. Bootstrap support is displayed at nodes and time is shown on the x axis in million years. The figure was drawn using the program FigTree (http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree/).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Genetic structure within the /Helvetica clade. (A) Distribution of study samples within the western Alps, spanning the three formerly described species and the three new species described in this study. Individuals of A. saussurei introgressed by A. pubescens are labeled as ‘A. saussurei x’. The background map shows elevation and was drawn using the R package raster. (B) Pictures depicting the typical high elevation cliff habitats that have been explored for the present study (B1), and the three main mountain ranges where putative novel species occur, namely Mont Blanc (B2), Ecrins (B3), and Monte Viso (B4). (C) Phylogenetic relationships between the 51 individuals of /Helvetica, inferred using ML on a concatenation of 23,780 loci (276,745 bp). The figure was drawn using the program FigTree (http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree/). (D) Assignment of the same individuals to seven genetic clusters as identified based on a strict selection of 381 unlinked SNPs.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Genetic and morphological delimitations of species within the /Helvetica clade. (A) Species tree inferred from a strict selection of 381 unlinked SNPs, all nodes received a posterior probability of 1.00 except for the most basal one which was supported with 0.45 posterior probability. The figure was drawn using the ggtree R package (http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/ggtree.html). (B) Drawings of the different trichome morphologies characterizing species of the /Helvetica clade. (a–c) A. pubescens and A. helvetica; (d–i) A. saussurei sp. nov. and A. delphinensis sp. nov. (d,e,g) leaves only; (i) peduncles only; (f,h) both leaves and peduncules); (j–l) A. vesulensis sp. nov.; (m–n) A. alpina. All drawings from C. Dentant (C) Pictures depicting the overall morphology of different species delimited within the /Helvetica clade. Pictures from L. Boulangeat, S. Ibanez, and S. Lavergne.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ozenda PL. Végétation de la chaîne alpine dans l’espace montagnard Européen. Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Lyon. 1985;54:66–67.
    1. Engler R, et al. 21st century climate change threatens mountain flora unequally across Europe. Glob. Change Biol. 2011;17:2330–2341. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02393.x. - DOI
    1. Spehn, E. M. & Körner, C. A global assessment of mountain biodiversity and its function. In Global Change and Mountain Regions, 393–400 (2005).
    1. Rahbek C, et al. Humboldt’s enigma: What causes global patterns of mountain biodiversity? Science (80-.) 2019;365:1108–1113. doi: 10.1126/science.aax0149. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Aeschimann D, Rasolofo N, Theurillat J. Analyse de la flore des Alpes. 3: biologie et phénologie. Candollea. 2012;67:3–22.

Publication types