ID: 613 / 77

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: EVOLUTIONARY TRENDS IN SKY-ISLANDS: NEW INSIGHTS IN THE SEARCH OF MAJOR BIOGEOGRAPHIC AND PHYLOGEOGRAPHIC PATTERNS

Abstract: Sky islands systems are high elevation landscapes fragmented and isolated by lowland areas, which act as barriers to dispersal. These mountainous settings often stand out as important diversity hotspots, supporting both a high degree of endemism and ancient lineages. In this way, sky islands have played a fundamental role in the formation and maintenance of evolutionary patterns of diversity, acting both as refuges and as areas of diversification. Although the mechanisms that act on sky-islands have often been assimilated with traditional oceanic archipelagos, these mechanisms do not act in parallel. For example, on oceanic islands organisms must necessarily have arrived via cross oceanic dispersal, while on sky-islands organisms may have arrived from adjacent areas, through forest bridges, range distribution shifts of vegetation belts or through habitat suitability pockets formed under past climates. This has allowed sky-island systems to act as refuges and generators of diversity along multiple spatial and temporal scales, offering important potential to investigate additional processes such as niche shifts, postglacial expansion, and sympatric speciation. However, these patterns and processes remain poorly explored at global level and identifying the mechanisms that generate this diversity is especially relevant in the context of increased human activity and for future predictions of climate change. The present symposium brings together a group of researchers interested in sky-islands to present cutting-edge approaches that allow identifying convergent trends in sky-islands evolution. This will allow us to improve our understanding in the search of refuges of diversity and major phylogeographic patterns for the conservation of these places of high evolutionary potential.

Speaker 1: Carme Blanco. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Passeig del Migdia, s/n, 08038, Barcelona. carme.blanco@uab.cat Diversification dynamics of the Afrotemperate flora: a study-case on the species-rich genus Helichrysum (Compositae)

Speaker 2: Abel Gizaw. Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1172 BlindernNO-0318 Oslo. a.g.seid@nhm.uio.no. Alpine plant radiations in the Afro-alpine biodiversity hotspot.

Speaker 3: Pau Carnicero. University of Innsbruck, Department of Botany, Sternwartestrasse 15, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria. Pau. Carnicero@uibk.ac.at. Detecting post-glacial expansion patterns and hotspots of intraspecific diversity for high elevation plants in the Pyrenees: a multi-species comparative approach.

Topics (Up to three): Biogeography / Phylogeography

Topic 2: Phylogenetics and Phylogenomics

Topic 3: Systematics and taxonomy

Justification: This symposium fits several of the main topics of the Conference, including "Systematics, phylogenetics, biogeography and evolution" and "Biodiversity and conservation". More specifically, the present symposium bridges at least 4 of the 31 proposed topics, including: Biogeography / Phylogeography, Conservation Biology, Phylogenetics and Phylogenomics, Systematics and taxonomy. This ensures a potential interest for IBC Congress attendees. In addition, the first three proposed speakers for this symposium encompass researchers at various stages of their career (predoc, postdoc and assistant professor), with diversity of gender, and geography (Ethiopian and Spanish).