In many respects, Southeast Asia is a singular evolutionary arena. Like the rest of the world, it has been subject to ~20 Quaternary cold epochs (‘ice ages’), but more so than any other region, it has undergone extreme fluctuations in the distribution of land across the world’s most complex island realm, the Indonesian Archipelago. In modern times, Southeast Asia has become one of the most densely inhabited regions on Earth, highly affected by the modern environmental crisis. In this talk, we will explore the pronounced impact that Southeast Asia’s unique history has had on the evolutionary trajectories of its birds and other vertebrate biota, and how the recent anthropogenic change has impacted its species in terms of genetic diversity loss.
The build-up and loss of genetic diversity in Southeast Asian biota