Global Drivers of Mountain Plant Biodiversity

Mountains exhibit disproportionately high biodiversity of terrestrial organisms, which has long fascinated natural scientists and generated questions regarding the underlying processes. My project is aimed to provide a holistic view that explicitly incorporates geological, climatic, and biological processes at a fine spatial resolution, to understand the processes that have shaped contemporary patterns of plant biodiversity across global mountain systems through time. I will use multiple data sets to obtain the precise quantitative relationships between potential drivers and biodiversity, which should include an estimate of diversity, phylogenetic tree, fossil, geological and paleoclimatic reconstruction and dynamics. The integration of this information across disciplines will open up new opportunities to explore how mountain formation interacts with biodiversity.