Tropical mountains harbor exceptional concentrations of Earth's biodiversity. In topographically complex landscapes, montane species typically inhabit multiple mountainous regions, but are absent in intervening lowland environments. Here we report a comparative analysis of genome-wide DNA polymorphism data for population pairs from eighteen Indo-Pacific bird species from the Moluccan islands of Buru and Seram and from across the island of New Guinea. We test how barrier strength and relative elevational distribution predict population differentiation, rates of historical gene flow, and changes in effective population sizes through time. We find population differentiation to be consistently and positively correlated with barrier strength and a species' altitudinal floor. Additionally, we find that Pleistocene climate oscillations have had a dramatic influence on the demographics of all species but were most pronounced in regions of smaller geographic area. Surprisingly, even the most divergent taxon pairs at the highest elevations experience gene flow across barriers, implying that dispersal between montane regions is important for the formation of montane assemblages.

Biodiversity Research Centre University of British Columbia Vancouver BC Canada

Biology Centre of Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Entomology Branisovska 31 Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

Centre for Ocean Life DTU Aqua Kemitorvet building 202 DK 2800 Kgs Lyngby Denmark

Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics Swedish Museum of Natural History SE 104 05 Stockholm Sweden

Department of Biology and Museum of Southwestern Biology University of New Mexico Albuquerque NM USA

Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Center Globe Institute University of Copenhagen Copenhagen Denmark

Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz Institut für Evolutions und Biodiversitätsforschung Berlin Germany

Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense Research Center for Biology the National Research and Innovation Agency Jl Raya Jakarta Bogor Km 46 Cibinong 16911 Indonesia

Natural History Museum of Denmark University of Copenhagen Universitetsparken 15 DK 2100 Copenhagen Denmark

Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery Port Moresby Papua New Guinea

The New Guinea Binatang Research Centre Madang Papua New Guinea

University of South Bohemia Faculty of Science Branisovska 1760 Ceske Budejovice Czech Republic

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