Climatic Changes and Orogeneses in the Late Miocene of Eurasia: The Main Triggers of an Expansion at a Continental Scale?

What is it about?

The study reports reconstruction of the latest multi-gene phylogeny of a comprehensive sample of Hippophae taxa. It supports earlier hypotheses on biogeographic trends in the genus but also provides new insights into their temporal patterns. The study demonstrates how climatic and geologic processes in the late Neogene of Eurasia (the last 10-15 Ma) could shape the evolutionary processes in the genus and explain the spectacular expansion of the plant across the continent.

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Why is it important?

The climate of the Late Miocene may represent the further global climate the humanity may experience in several decades, if the current trends continue as most contemporary climatic models suggest. It is therefore important to understand how floras responded to similar climatic processes in past epochs. It has been suggested more than a half century ago that the ancestors of European sea buckthorn arrived to the continent from Eastern Asia. However, this hypothesis has not been tested by application of modern analytical techniques until now. Our study uses a representative (and complete) sample of all taxa from the genus and a robust sample of genetic markers. It also employs a standard set of analytical methods of contemporary phylogenetics.

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