Dataset Information

Surviving the ice: Northern refugia and postglacial colonization.

ABSTRACT: The contemporary distribution of biological diversity cannot be understood without knowledge of how organisms responded to the geological and climatic history of Earth. In particular, Quaternary expansions and contractions of glacial ice sheets are thought to have played an important role in shaping the distribution of biodiversity among current populations in the north-temperate region. In the central U.S., fossil and palynological data provide support for the maintenance of a large southeastern refuge during the last glacial maximum, and many temperate organisms are believed to have responded to glacial expansion by shifting their ranges to southern refugia and recolonizing northward to track the receding ice sheets. Thus, organisms are assumed to track favorable climates, and species ranges are expected to have shifted significantly. Here we present data from a deciduous forest vertebrate, the eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus) in the central U.S., indicating the maintenance of multiple refugial sources as well as a southward expansion from a northern refugium. These results challenge the view that, during glacial maxima, organisms must have migrated south out of their ranges to track favorable climates.

SUBMITTER: Rowe KC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC478575 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Surviving the ice: Northern refugia and postglacial colonization.

Rowe Kevin C KC Heske Edward J EJ Brown Patrick W PW Paige Ken N KN

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20040712 28

The contemporary distribution of biological diversity cannot be understood without knowledge of how organisms responded to the geological and climatic history of Earth. In particular, Quaternary expansions and contractions of glacial ice sheets are thought to have played an important role in shaping the distribution of biodiversity among current populations in the north-temperate region. In the central U.S., fossil and palynological data provide support for the maintenance of a large southeaster ...[more]

PMID: 15249673

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Project description:Many Northeast (NE) Pacific fishes and invertebrates survived Pleistocene glaciations in northern refugia, but the extent that kelps survived in northern areas is uncertain. Here, we test the hypothesis that populations of sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima) persisted in the Gulf of Alaska during ice-age maxima when the western margin of the Cordilleran ice sheet covered coastal areas around the NE Pacific Ocean. We estimated genetic diversities within and phylogeographical relationships among 14 populations along 2,800 km in the NE Pacific and Bering Sea with partial sequences of mitochondrial DNA 5'-cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI, bp = 624, n = 543), chloroplast DNA ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase large subunit-3' (rbcL, bp = 735, n = 514), and 11 microsatellite loci. Concatenated sequences of rbcL and COI showed moderate levels of within-population genetic diversity (mean h = 0.200) but substantial differences among populations (ΦST = 0.834, p < .0001). Microsatellites showed moderate levels of heterozygosity within populations (mean H E = 0.391). Kelps in the same organellar lineage tended to cluster together, regardless of geographic origins, as indicated in a principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) of microsatellite genotypes. The PCoA also showed evidence of nuclear hybridizations between co-occurring organellar lineages. Individual admixture plots with population clusters of K = 2, 6, and 9 showed increasing complexity with considerable historical admixture between some clusters. A time-calibrated phylogeny placed divergences between rbcL-COI lineages at 1.4 million years at most. The time frames of mutation in the rbcL-COI lineages and microsatellite population clusters differed among locations. The existence of ancient lineages in the Gulf of Alaska, moderate levels of genetic diversity, and the absence of departures from neutrality are consistent with northern refugia during multiple Croll-Milankovitch climate cycles in the Pleistocene Epoch.

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Dataset Information

Surviving the ice: Northern refugia and postglacial colonization.

Publications

Surviving the ice: Northern refugia and postglacial colonization.

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