Ortego Lab

The main goal of ALPIMED is to shed light on the processes that have contributed to generate the high levels of endemism in alpine biotas currently confined to MSIA and understand the natural and anthropogenic (i.e., climate warming) processes behind the extraordinary fragmentation and high risk of extinction of their contemporary populations.  To this end, ALPIMED will focus on three radiations of alpine grasshoppers from the Iberian, Italian and Balkan peninsulas that currently form extremely isolated populations and, in some cases, have already experienced considerable distributional shifts towards higher elevations. Specifically, ALPIMED aims to: 1) integrate genomic data and phenotypic information to evaluate the taxonomic status and evolutionary distinctiveness and cohesiveness of the different taxa within each species radiation (Objective 1); 2) infer the processes that have contributed to the high levels of local microendemism among alpine biotas from MSIA (Objective 2); and 3) document recent distributional shifts, determine the factors that have shaped the demographic history of each species, evaluate alternative spatiotemporally-explicit demographic and coalescent models, and use the inferred parameters to forecast the fate of the species and populations under future scenarios of global warming and identify those that will be more vulnerable/resilient to climate change (Objective 3). These three objectives guide the hierarchical framework adopted in this proposal to infer the processes that have generated the extraordinarily rich biodiversity of MSIA, anticipate the risks of genetic erosion, local extirpation and species extinction linked to global warming and, ultimately, propose evidence-based strategies to mitigate its negative impacts.