The scattered eastern African high mountains harbor a renowned and highly endemic flora, but the taxonomy and phylogeographic history of many plant groups are still insufficiently known. The high-alpine populations of the Geranium arabicum/kilimandscharicum complex present intricate morphological variation and have recently been suggested to comprise two new endemic taxa. Here we aim to contrib...

Pachyseius anisimovi sp. nov. is described based on specimens from soil and litter in the Altai Mountains and the West and East Sayan Mountains in South Siberia, Russia. A key to ten Pachyseius species known from Asia is provided. 

Sky islands provide ideal opportunities for understanding how climatic changes associated with Pleistocene glacial cycles influenced species distributions, genetic diversification, and demography. The salamander Plethodon ouachitae is largely restricted to high-elevation, mesic forest on six major mountains in the Ouachita Mountains. Because these mountains are separated by more xeric, low-elev...

The Tienshan Mountains, with its status as "water tower", is the main water source and ecological barrier in Central Asia. The rapid warming affected precipitation amounts and fraction as well as the original glacier/snowmelt water processes, thereby affecting the runoff and water storage. The ratio of snowfall to precipitation (S/P) experienced a downward trend, along with a shift from snow to...

Investigations in Wright Valley, adjacent to the Transantarctic Mountains in East Antarctica, shed light on the question of whether high-latitude Pliocene climate was warm enough to cause widespread deglaciation of the East Antarctic craton with a concurrent Magellanic moorland-like environment. If Pliocene-age diatoms, presently in glaciogenic deposits high in the Transantarctic Mountains, had...

The heterogeneity of the forests west of the Mississippi River in the Southern United States is strongly influenced by physiography and topography. The west Gulf Coastal Plain of southern Arkansas, northwestern Louisiana, and eastern Texas features highly productive pine-dominated forests (Pinus spp.) on gentle terrain that are interspersed by major and minor alluvial bottomland hardwood forest...

Three ring-width chronologies were developed from Qilian Juniper (Sabina przewalskii Kom.) at the upper treeline along a west-east gradient in the Anyemaqen Mountains. Most chronological statistics, except for mean sensitivity (MS), decreased from west to east. The first principal component (PC1) loadings indicated that stands in a similar climate condition were most important to the variabilit...