Rapid diversification in the high elevation Andes driven by convergent evolution in geographically isolated “sky islands” Speciation Genomics

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The high elevation tropical-alpine grasslands of the Andes – the páramo, jalca and puna – extending > 4,000 km from Venezuela to northern Argentina, are home to an exceptionally high concentration of recent, hyper-fast, species-rich plant evolutionary radiations. Despite the prominence of this remarkable high elevation Andean hotspot of evolutionary radiations – the world’s fastest evolving and coolest biodiversity hotspot – our understanding of the geographical and temporal trajectories of trait and species diversification of these radiations remains fragmentary. I will cover some recent results regarding the diversification trajectories in one of the most species-rich Andean lineages – the genus Lupinus, with ca. 170 Andean species. I will show that the Andean Lupinus radiation is extremely young (< 1 Million years) and consists of multiple independent sub-radiations taking place in geographical disjunct “sky islands” in the high elevation Andes. Remarkably, specific growth forms have evolved convergently in each sub-radiation, and are associated with specific elevation bands, highlighting the role of ecological adaptation in rapid diversification in this systems.