Species divergence and maintenance of species cohesion of three closely related Primula species in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Understanding the relative roles of geography and ecology in driving speciation, population divergence and maintenance of species cohesion is of great interest to molecular ecology. Closely related species that are parapatrically distributed in mountainous areas provide an ideal model to evaluate these key issues, especially when genomic data are analyzed within a spatially and ecologically explicit context. Here based on RADseq data, we used three closely related species of Primula that occur in the Himalayas, the Hengduan Mountains and Northeast Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) to examine spatial and ecological effects on interspecific divergence and maintenance of species cohesion.