Integrating genomics and biogeography to unravel the origin of a mountain biota: The case of a reptile endemicity hotspot in Arabia
Creators: name: Burriel-Carranza, Bernat
name: Tejero-Cicuéndez, Héctor
name: Carné, Albert
name: Riaño, Gabriel
name: Talavera, Adrián
name: Al Saadi, Saleh
name: Els, Johannes
name: Šmíd, Jiří
name: Tamar, Karin
name: Tarroso, Pedro
name: Carranza, Salvador
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: Arabia
Arid environments
Biogeography
ddRADseq
Desertification
Genomics
Reptiles
Hajar Mountains
mountain building

description: Advances in genomics have greatly enhanced our understanding of mountain biodiversity, providing new insights into the complex and dynamic mechanisms that drive the formation of mountain biotas. These span from broad biogeographic patterns to population dynamics and adaptations to these environments. However, significant challenges remain in integrating large-scale and fine-scale findings to develop a comprehensive understanding of mountain biodiversity. One significant challenge is the lack of genomic data, particularly in historically understudied arid regions where reptiles are a particularly diverse vertebrate group. In the present study, we assembled a de novo genome-wide SNP dataset for the complete endemic reptile fauna of a mountain range (19 described species with more than 600 specimens sequenced), and integrated state-of-the-art biogeographic analyses at the population, species and community level. Thus, we provide for the first time a holistic integration of how a whole endemic reptile community has originated, diversified and dispersed through a mountain system. Our results show that reptiles independently colonized the Hajar Mountains of southeastern Arabia 11 times. After colonization, species delimitation methods suggest high levels of within-mountain diversification, supporting up to 49 putative species. This diversity is strongly structured following local topography, with the highest peaks acting as a broad barrier to gene flow among the entire community. Surprisingly, orogenic events do not seem key drivers of the biogeographic history of reptiles in this system. Instead, past climatic events seem to have had a major role in this community assemblage. We observe an increase of vicariant events from Late Pliocene onwards, coinciding with an unstable climatic period of rapid shifts between hyper-arid and semiarid conditions that led to the ongoing desertification of Arabia. We conclude that paleoclimate, and particularly extreme aridification, acted as a main driver of diversification in arid mountain systems which is tangled with the generation of highly adapted endemicity. Overall, our study does not only provide a valuable contribution to understanding the evolution of mountain biodiversity, but also offers a flexible and scalable approach that can be reproduced into any taxonomic group and at any discrete environment.
description: Funding provided by: MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: PGC2018-098290-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE)
Funding provided by: European Regional Development FundCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100008530Award Number: PID2021-128901NB-I00
Funding provided by: Ministerio de Ciencia e InnovaciónCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/05r0vyz12Award Number: FPU18/04742
Funding provided by: CaixaBankCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/03zhx9h04Award Number: LCF/BQ/DR20/11790007
Funding provided by: MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: FJC2021-046832-I
Funding provided by: Fundação para a Ciência e TecnologiaCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/00snfqn58Award Number: DL57/2016/CP1440/CT0008
Funding provided by: Czech Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/01pv73b02Award Number: 22-12757S
Funding provided by: Charles UniversityCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/024d6js02Award Number: 204069
Funding provided by: Ministerio de Ciencia e InnovaciónCrossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/05r0vyz12Award Number: PRE2019-088729
description: Raw ddRADseq demultiplexed reads are available and can be processed with ipyrad (https://ipyrad.readthedocs.io/). Supplementary figures, supplementary tables datasets and tree files are uploaded as separate files.