Small mammal communities of Tuva Republic (Southern Siberia, Russia) in a changing climate

Abstract

An important indicator of the integrity of the biosphere is biological diversity. Rapid changes in global climate directly affect the biodiversity of ecosystems as a whole. Tuva is a region with unique land-scapes that determine the biodiversity of flora and fauna with globally significant endemic and rare species. The patterns of formation and development of communities of small mammals are considered; the role of factors of the physical-geographical environment, phylogeographic distribution of individual species and their phylogenetic relationships in the formation of certain communities is presented as part of the general law of the formation of biological diversity. The modifying influence of global and regional climate factors is shown, which leads to the exchange of communities within bioclimatic zones: the relative abundance and expansion of the range of humid territories increases; with the expansion of the pika's range, the ranges of specialized seed eaters also expand; an expansion of the ranges of forest species into the steppe zone and a reduction in the number of species in desert and dry steppe zones is recorded.

Keywords

• small mammals
• boundary space
• zoogeographic boundary
• orography
• transect
• ecological and phylogenetic relationships
• co-evolutionary relations
• ecosystem transformation
• tuva