Quaternary climatic oscillations had a large impact on European biogeography. Alternation of cold and warm stages caused recurrent glaciations, massive vegetation shifts, and large-scale range alterations in many species. The Eurasian steppe biome and its grasslands are a noteworthy example; they underwent climate-driven, large-scale contractions during warm stages and expansions during cold stages. Here, we evaluate the impact of these range alterations on the late Quaternary demography of several phylogenetically distant plant and insect species, typical of the Eurasian steppes. We compare three explicit demographic hypotheses by applying an approach combining convolutional neural networks with approximate Bayesian computation. We identified congruent demographic responses of cold stage expansion and warm stage contraction across all species, but also species-specific effects. The demographic history of the Eurasian steppe biota reflects major paleoecological turning points in the late Quaternary and emphasizes the role of climate as a driving force underlying patterns of genetic variance on the biome level.

Departamento de Genetica e Evolucao Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos Rodovia Washington Luis km 235 13565905 Sao Carlos Brazil

Department of Botany University of Innsbruck Sternwartestraße 15 6020 Innsbruck Austria

Department of Ecology University of Innsbruck Technikerstraße 25 6020 Innsbruck Austria

Department of Genetics and Evolution University of Geneva Boulevard D'Yvoy 4 1205 Genève Switzerland

Geneva Natural History Museum of Geneva Route de Malagnou 1 1208 Genève Switzerland

Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences Zámek 1 25243 Průhonice Czech Republic

Real Jardín Botánico CSIC Plaza de Murillo 2 28014 Madrid Spain

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figshare
10.6084/m9.figshare.19107944.v1