TY  - THES
A1  - Matuszak, Sabine
T1  - Evolution of mountain plants in the region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and beyond
N2  - Biodiversity is unevenly distributed on Earth. Highly diverse biotas are particularly expected in mountain systems, because altitudinal zonation provides a number of habitat alternatives, which could lead to lower extinction rates during climatic changes. Nevertheless, the impact of environmental changes on plant diversification (especially for sub-alpine taxa) in the course of mountain orogenesis remains poorly understood. This is also true for the highest and largest plateau on Earth, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) and its surrounding areas.In this doctoral thesis, I investigated the impact of environmental changes on plant diversification and the floristic exchange between the QTP region and biodiversity hotspots of Southeast Asia as well as other parts of the world by using the sub-alpine genera Agapetes and Vaccinium (Vaccinieae, Ericaceae) as well as Tripterospermum (Gentianinae, Gentianaceae) as model systems. Furthermore, I examined the role of niche evolution and conservatism in a changing environment over time, and detected possible beneficial morphological traits of plants in the surroundings of the QTP by investigating subtropical Gentianinae (Crawfurdia, Kuepferia, Metagentiana, Sinogentiana, and Tripterospermum; Gentianaceae).
KW  - Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
KW  - plant diversification
KW  - niche evolution
KW  - Tripterospermum
KW  - Gentianinae
KW  - Vaccinium
KW  - Agapetes
KW  - Vaccinieae
Y1  - 2015
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/39632
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-396321
ER  -