Biogeographic connections between the flora of the Arctic and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: building on the legacy of Richard Abbott

Background The Arctic and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), two high-latitude and high-altitude arid ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere, harbour numerous cold-adapted plant species that exhibit remarkable phenotypic convergence. The biogeographic relationship between these disjunct regions was first hypothesised by Engler (1880), who proposed shared evolutionary origins of their flora. Since the early twenty-first century, molecular phylogenetic studies led by Richard Abbott and other researchers have substantiated this link.