A paleoecological context to assess the development of oak forest in Colombia: A comment on Zorilla-Azcué, S., Gonzalez-Rodríguez, A., Oyama, K., González, M.A., & Rodríguez-Correa, H., The DNA history of a lonely oak: Quercus humboldtii phylogeography in the Colombian Andes. Ecology and Evolution 2021, doi: 10.100-2/ ece3.7529

Abstract

The present “comment” on Zorilla-Azcué et al.’s paper “The DNA history of a lonely oak: Quercus humboldtii phylogeography in the Colombian Andes. Ecology and Evolution 2021, doi:10.100-2/ece3.7529” provides the paleoecological understanding of oak forest since Quercus became apparent in the Northern Andes three glacial–interglacial cycles ago. The interpretation of phylogeographical data is placed in an up-to-date paleoecological context. We arrived at sharper conclusions how genetic diversity between Q. humboldtii populations might have been driven by the dynamic environmental theatre of the recent Pleistocene. This paleoecological context also serves the potential future analyses of other arboreal taxa from the Andean montane forest belt. We show that hypotheses to be tested should grow out of phylogenetic analysis and paleoecological understanding together.