Leveraging years of fieldwork across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and adjacent regions, our team combined comparative genomics, population genetics, and ecological modeling to dissect the radiation history of representative birds in the Hengduan Mountains.

Key findings:

  1. Geological events (rapid uplift ~8 Mya) and climate change (Last Glacial Period) jointly drove species diversification
  2. Multiple high-altitude adaptation candidate genes identified (e.g., EPAS1, PPARA)
  3. A new "geo-ecological dual-driver" hypothesis proposed

Published in Molecular Biology and Evolution (IF: 11.0).

Code and data: GitHub