UNVEILING FINE-SCALE PATTERNS OF BIODIVERSITY ABOVE AND BELOW THE GROUND IN A TERRESTRIAL EUROPEAN HOTSPOT

The description of the biodiversity is recognized as a urgent task but is hampered by longstanding shortage of resources. This particularly affects the knowledge on the diversity of low vagile animals, which usually display a remarkable geographic variation at a fine scale. In this thesis, I propose a workflow to improve substantially the knowledge on the fine-scale diversity of low vagile animals at a regional level and within a relatively short time frame. The workflow includes a “prioritization step”, relying on a comprehensive dataset of occurrence records of any target taxonomic group, followed by an integrative taxonomic study at fine geographic scale on the most priority species or species complex. I showcase the workflow using as a study area the South-Eastern Alps, recognized as a high biodiversity region at the continental level. I applied the prioritization step to Geophilidae, a group of mostly strictly endogeic centipedes known to display a remarkable variation at fine geographic scale. The dataset of occurrence records assembled in the context of the prioritization step included nearly 3300 records, based on nearly 8000 collected specimens and assigned to 39 species and species complexes. The dataset was compliant with current standards of biodiversity data publication, it was released publicly to aid research and described in a data paper, which is included in this thesis. Instead, for the step of studying the fine-scale diversity of priority taxa I focused on a species complex of Erebia butterflies, including E. euryale and E. ligea. These are relatively low vagile butterflies, associated with various habitats at low- to mid-elevations. After sampling these animals across South-Eastern Alps, and most densely across the narrow region including Dolomiti Bellunesi, I used a set of clustering, phylogenetic and multivariate analyses to delineate the major evolutionary lineages inhabiting the region based on genome-wide SNP data and to assess phenotypic differentiation between the lineages based on morphological data of wings and male copulatory structures. Overall, I found support for the taxonomy currently in use for the complex, including 4 main lineages, and a deep differentiation and reduced gene flow between the lineages currently recognized as subspecies of E. euryale. I also found previously undetected fine-scale variation within E. ligea. This study is included in this thesis as a draft of manuscript.