High times in the Himalaya: Ground beetle phylogeography as a tool to unravel the Himalayan-Tibetan orogenesis

本研究的主要目的是建立高度多样化的现代地甲虫类群，作为推导山地隆升序列和古环境序列以及评估喜马拉雅-西藏造山带（HTO）古海拔的新指标。高海拔地面甲虫的特殊适应性是基于大量物种的存在，这些物种表现出必要的无翅。由于这个特点，这些物种是非常弱的分散者。它们的演变必然与山地系统的环境历史密切相关。本文重点研究了青藏高原南缘（藏南喜马拉雅）的演替。由于造山运动的复杂性，我们所研究的物种群的巨大多样性，以及由于提案的持续时间有限，初步限制了对该地区的调查。尽管如此，南HTO的造山运动对该地区的地质、古气候学和生物地理学具有独特的意义，原因如下：1)大多数现代地质模型对该部分山系的隆升历史存在差异；(2)高喜马拉雅的隆起显著影响高亚洲内陆以及全球范围内的气候；(3)藏南可能是一个重要的新生代演化中心，影响了中亚和东亚的现代动物群。

The primary goal of this study is to establish the highly diverse species groups of modern ground beetles as a new proxy to derive successions of mountain uplift and paleoenvironments and to assess the paleoelevation of the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen (HTO). The particular suitability of the high altitude ground beetles is based on the existence of a large number of species that showcase obligatory winglessness. These species are extremely weak dispersers because of this trait. Their evolution necessarily is closely linked to the environmental history of the mountain system. In this proposal, we focus on studying the successions on the southern margin of the HTO (Himalaya, South Tibet). The initial confinement of the investigation to this area is due to the complexity of the orogeny, the enormous diversity of the species groups we address, and due to the limited duration of the proposal. Nevertheless, the orogeny of the southern HTO is of unique significance for the geology, paleoclimatology, and biogeography of the area for the following reasons: i) most of the modern geological models differ with respect to the uplift history of this part of the mountain system; ii) the uplift of the High Himalaya markedly influences the climate in the interior of High Asia as well as on a global scale; iii) South Tibet was likely an important evolution center during the Cenozoic and impacted the modern faunas of Central and East Asia.