Format: ORAL

Saddam Saqib1,2,3*, Wajid Zaman4, Fazal Ullah1, Zhi-Duan Chen2,You-Cai Xiong*1

1State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agro-ecosystems, College of Ecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China 2State Key Laboratory of Plant Diversity and Specialty Crops, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China; sadamsaqib.qau@gmail.com (S.S.), zhiduan@ibcas.ac.cn (Z.D.C.) 3University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 4Department of Life Sciences, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 38541, Gyeongbuk, Republic of Korea

Mountainous ecosystems are prime biodiversity reservoirs and also serve as hub of raw materials and minerals. Various factors such as climate, landscape, ecological gradients and topographic factors play role in maintaining biodiversity in mountainous regions such as Himalaya. Himalaya is one the world highest mountains range and known as biodiversity hot spot. The region is affected by strong elevational gradients, drastic altitudinal climate variations over very short distances which generate various environmental niches that leads to simple geometric constraints on species distribution boundaries resulting in divergence and speciation. This study focused on general trends and recent advances in highlighting biodiversity hotspots and its evolutionary history. Our study observed that use of species richness, phylogenetic diversity, phylogenetic endemism, and weighted endemism can help to understand biodiversity hotspots in the study area. On the other hand, phylogenetic patterns such as use of net related index and nearest taxon index revealed phylogenetic clustering and over dispersion within study region. Furthermore, our study highlighted that spatial distribution and phylogenetic tree by using diversity metrics, help to understand phytoregions, indicator species and evolutionary distinctions within the Himalayan flora. Based on these factors, our study recommends that integrative, multifacteted and policy backed approaches are required for understanding of the Himalayan flora. Our study will be helpful in examining ecosystem drivers and provide novel insights into the maintenance and conservation of other mountain regions.