Abstract
Lobaria pindarensis is an endemic species of the Himalayas and the Hengduan Mountains. Little information is available on the phylogeography genetics and colonization history of this species or how its distribution patterns changed in response to the orographic history of the Himalayas and Hengduan Mountains. Based on samples covering a major part of the species' distribution range, we used 443 newly generated sequences of nine loci for molecular coalescent analyses in order to reconstruct the evolutionary history of L. pindarensis, and to reconstruct the species' ancestral phylogeographic distributions using Bayesian binary MCMC analyses. The results suggest that current populations originated from the Yunnan region of the Hengduan Mountains in the middle Pliocene, and that the Himalayas of Bhutan were colonized by a lineage that diverged from Yunnan ca. 2.72 Ma. The analysis additionally indicates that the Nepal and Xizang areas of the Himalayas were colonized from Yunnan as well, and that there was later a second dispersal event from Yunnan to Bhutan. We conclude that the change in climate and habitat related to the continuous uplift of the Himalayas and the Hengduan Mountains in the late Pliocene and middle Pleistocene influenced the geographic distribution pattern of L. pindarensis.