西南山地是生物多样性最丰富的地区之一，具有丰富的中国特有动物资源。该地区地质构造复杂、垂直变化明显。这种变化的环境梯度导致温度和氧分压在海拔梯度上急剧变化。高海拔环境中的低温、低氧会导致机体血氧不足，引起需氧代谢组织供氧不足，从而影响动物对食物和水的需求、持续运动能力和机体产热能力等生理特征。因此，如何适应高海拔环境下的低温、低氧压力，是山地种类所面临的主要挑战。本项目以主要分布于西南山地高海拔的两种山雀（褐冠山雀与黑冠山雀）与它们分布在低海拔地区的两种近缘山雀（沼泽山雀与黄腹山雀）为研究对象，通过比较基因组与转录组研究山雀鸟类的高海拔遗传适应，探讨基因型特化与调控在决定山雀鸟类分布极限中的作用。在全球变暖，山地地区温度升高的背景下，本项目对于理解山地生物应对环境变化的内在机理具有重要的科研价值。

The Southwestern Mountains in China are located in a global diversity hotspot (Eastern Himalayas) that is characterized by high levels of endemism, steep environmental gradients, and dramatic shifts in community composition across elevations. The Southwestern Mountains in China exhibit steep gradients in temperature and partial pressure of oxygen (PO2) across elevation, thus high elevations presented hostile environment to organisms because of low temperature and hypoxia. Our research program will take an integrative approach to investigate the mechanistic underpinnings of adaptation to high elevations by using comparative genomic and transcriptional approaches, and test the roles of genotypic specialization and genetic regulation in defining elevational range limits in four Parus species (P. dichrous vs. P. palustris, P. rubidiventris and P. venustulus). The proposed project will inform questions of diversification in montane regions, which are widely regarded as the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems and are under severe threat from human impact and climate change. Temperatures across elevations increase with the global warming, Thus, understanding the relative effects of temperature and PO2 on species distributions will be fundamental to our understanding of how montane biota respond to a warming planet.