Cover | Climate in the Hills, People in the Plains
July Cover
Photo by Haomiao Zhang and Ruibin Song
Download the high-resolution image
The photo features an endemic damselfly (Archineura incarnata) of eastern China, and the largest species within its family in Odonata, perching at the water's edge and waiting for a mate.
Read the open access paper in Ecography, by Liu et al. (2026): Climatic drivers prevail in montane and lowland Odonata latitudinal diversity gradients, but human modification erodes lowland patterns
From the authors:
Aquatic invertebrates are among the most species-rich yet scientifically neglected groups globally, receiving far less attention than plants or vertebrates. This gap is especially acute in China, a megadiverse country where baseline Odonata data remain critically sparse. What we cannot see, we cannot protect and most people have never truly seen a dragonfly like this one.
Biodiversity conservation begins with awareness, and awareness begins with beauty. This simple, elegant image of an endemic damselfly at rest has the power to make readers pause, and to ask what it would mean to lose such a creature. Our study shows that montane Odonata face growing threats from climate change, while lowland species face mounting pressure from human disturbance. We hope this photograph sparks that question in every reader, and turns scientific findings into a personal motivation to protect what we still have.
From the abstract:
Latitudinal diversity gradients (LDGs) arise from the interplay of historical, ecological, and evolutionary processes, yet these drivers may differ across landforms. Mountains, with steep elevational and climatic gradients, often sustain distinct diversity dynamics compared with adjacent lowlands, where vertical climatic gradients are weak and human pressures stronger. However, how the patterns and underlying drivers of LDGs differ between mountains and lowlands remains poorly understood.
We used distributional and phylogenetic data for 732 Odonata species across eastern China to compare taxonomic and phylogenetic LDGs between mountains and lowlands, and to identify the environmental drivers underlying these patterns. Phylogenetic diversity was quantified using mean pairwise distance (MPD) and mean nearest taxon distance (MNTD), which reflect lineage relatedness at basal and tip levels, respectively.
Our results revealed that Odonata species richness and phylogenetic diversity declined significantly with latitude in mountains and lowlands. The slopes of LDGs were similar for species richness and tip phylogenetic diversity, whereas basal phylogenetic diversity showed a steeper decline in mountains than in lowlands. Random forest analysis revealed that current climatic conditions, such as mean annual temperature, are the key driver of LDGs in both mountains and lowlands, whereas historical climate change had little effect on either landform. Moreover, temperature seasonality played a particularly important role in shaping mountain LDGs, while human pressure exerted a significant negative effect in lowlands, particularly by reducing basal phylogenetic diversity.
Overall, our results highlight the dual conservation challenge of safeguarding climate-sensitive montane lineages while mitigating the loss of evolutionary heritage in heavily modified lowland ecosystems, and underscore the role of topography in shaping large-scale biodiversity patterns.
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