Geological and climatic histories likely shaped the origins of terrestrial vertebrates endemic to the Tibetan Plateau

Aim The Tibetan Plateau (TP) hosts many endemic species, but questions regarding when and from where these species originated have not been comprehensively answered. Here, we provide a synthesis of the biogeographical history of terrestrial vertebrates endemic to the TP and investigate the potential drivers of their spatio-temporal origins.

Location Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding regions

Time period Cenozoic

Major taxa studied Terrestrial vertebrates

Methods We used dispersal–extinction–cladogenesis models based on time-calibrated phylogenies to reconstruct the ancestral ranges of 174 endemic TP species and compiled the ancestral ranges and age estimates of their dispersal events. We generated a possibility map of source areas for endemic TP species by counting the incidence of non-TP sister clades in 110 km × 110 km grid cells. We used generalized linear mixed models to assess the relative importance of historical processes and environmental factors in explaining the g...