‚Die Große Öffnung des Westens bedeutet eine große Entwicklung für Qinghai’. Seit einigen Jahren begrüßen solche Parolen die Besucher der Provinz Qinghai und sind ebenfalls in administrativen Zentren aller Ebenen in tibetischen Nomadengebieten zu finden. Diese Parolen kündigen die Implementierung der Entwicklungsstrategie, die als die Große Öffnung des Westens (GÖW) bekannt wurde, an und versprechen allen Bewohnern von Chinas Westen eine blühende und reiche Zukunft. Aber wie genau sieht die Entwicklung in tibetischen Nomadengebieten aus? Wie kann sich die Lokalbevölkerung in diesen Entwicklungsprozeß einbinden und die versprochenen Vorteile nutzen? Welche Auswirkung wird die Entwicklungsstrategie auf das Leben und die Existenzgrundlage der tibetischen Nomaden haben? Im Kontrast zu den größeren Urbanzentren und ökonomisch wichtigen Lokalitäten, wo die Entwicklungsmaßnahmen sofort eingeleitet wurden, konnte man während der ersten Jahren nach der Implementierung der GÖW auf dem Grasland von Qinghai keine signifikanten Veränderungen feststellen. Erst später wurde der wichtigste und direkte Einfluß in den Nomadengebieten sichtbar. Es wurden neue Siedlungen um bereits existierende Städte oder direkt im Grasland errichtet und die Anzahl der neuen Häuser steigt jedes Jahr. Die Ansiedlungsstrategie dient Zwecken, wie der ökonomischen und sozialen Entwicklung, dem Umweltschutz und der politischen Kontrolle. Für die Nomaden bedeutet die Teilnahme an Ansiedlungsprojekten aber nicht nur Vorteile im Form von neuem Haus, sondern sie stellt auch eine enorme Herausforderung für die Haushalte, die sich an eine komplett neue, urbane Umgebung anpassen müssen, dar. Die verheißungsvollen Parolen über die GÖW mögen vielleicht aus der Sicht der Regierung, nach der Auswertung der nationalen Einkommensstatistiken der Wahrheit entsprechen, aus der Sicht der tibetischen Nomaden jedoch, bleibt die erzwungene Entwicklung auf dem Grasland ein umstrittenes und widersprüchliches Thema. / ‘The Great Opening of the West means great development for Qinghai.’ For several years now, signs bearing such slogans have been welcoming people entering the western Chinese Province of Qinghai and other administrative centres in Tibetan pastoral areas. They announce the implementation of the development strategy known as the Great Opening of the West (GOW) and promise a beneficial, prosperous and comfortable future to all inhabitants of rural regions in China’s West. But, what exactly does development in the Tibetan pastoral areas mean? In what way can the local people involve themselves in the processes of development and the benefits they promise? What impact is the development strategy likely to have on the lifestyle and livelihood of the Tibetan pastoralists? In contrast to the major urban areas and economically important localities, where the development work has begun in full scale, not many changes were observed on the grasslands of Qinghai Province during the early years of the GOW. Only later did the main, direct impact of the development strategy in the pastoral areas become visible. It consisted of an annually increasing number of settlement sites emerging around existing administrative centres or even in the middle of the grasslands. Sedentarisation methods are implemented for the purpose of economical or social development, or to solve the issues of environmental and political control. For the Tibetan pastoralists, participation in a sedentarisation project does not mean solely the provision of concrete benefits in the form of a house supplied by the government, but also the extraordinary adjustment of households to a new, urban environment. While the promising slogans promoting the GOW might appear true from the general point of view of the government when evaluating national income statistics, from the perspective of pastoral households, the forced development in pastoral areas remains a matter of contention and contradiction.

abstract: The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), a small burrowing lagomorph that occupies the high alpine grassland ecosystems of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in western China, remains a controversial subject among policymakers and researchers. One line of evidence points to pikas being a pest, which has led to massive attempts to eradicate pika populations. Another point of view is that pikas are a keystone species and an ecosystem engineer in the grassland ecosystem of the QTP. The pika eradication program raises a difficult ethical and religious dilemma for local pastoralists, and is criticized for not being supported by scientific evidence. Complex interactions between pikas, livestock, and habitat condition are poorly understood. My dissertation research examines underpinning justifications of the pika poisoning program leading to these controversies. I investigated responses of pikas to habitat conditions with field experimental manipulations, and mechanisms of pika population recovery following pika removal. I present policy recommendations based on an environmental ethics framework and findings from the field experiments. After five years of a livestock grazing exclusion experiment and four years of pika monitoring, I found that grazing exclusion resulted in a decline of pika habitat use, which suggests that habitat conditions determine pika population density. I also found that pikas recolonized vacant burrow systems following removal of residents, but that distances travelled by dispersing pikas were extremely short (~50 m). Thus, current pika eradication programs, if allowed to continue, could potentially compromise local populations as well as biodiversity conservation on the QTP. Lethal management of pikas is a narrowly anthropocentric-based form of ecosystem management that has excluded value-pluralism, such as consideration of the intrinsic value of species and the important ecological role played by pikas. These conflicting approaches have led to controversies and policy gridlock. In response, I suggest that the on-going large-scale pika eradication program needs reconsideration. Moderation of stocking rates is required in degraded pika habitats, and Integrated Pest Management may be required when high stocking rate and high pika density coexist. A moderate level of livestock and pika density can be consistent with maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the QTP alpine steppe ecosystem. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2016

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L'introgression est un processus fréquent et qui a d'importantes conséquences évolutives. L'objectif de ce travail était de tester un modèle neutre d'introgression chez des épicéas du Plateau tibétain et des régions voisines. Le travail a permis de mettre en évidence que la direction de l'introgression pouvait être prédite par la dynamique passée des populations d'arbres, et que l'importance de cette introgression était inversement proportionnelle à l'intensité des échanges génétiques au sein de l'espèce invasive, grâce à la comparaison de la structure génétique basée sur des marqueurs chloroplastiques (à hérédité paternelle) et mitochondriaux (à hérédité maternelle). / Introgression is a widespread phenomenon with potentially profound evolutionaryconsequences. Recently, significant progress in our understanding of introgression hasbeen made with the development of a neutral model. This model predicts that, whenone species invades an area already occupied by a related species, introgression ofneutral genes takes place mainly from the local species towards the invading ones. Inaddition, following a contact between two hybridizing species, the model predicts thatintrogression should be particularly frequent for genome components experiencinglittle gene flow. However, to date, there was no empirical example available, in whichone species expanded into the range of a closely related one and two markers withcontrasted rates of gene flow had been studied for both species. Only in such a casecould the two predictions outlined above be tested simultaneously. In addition, basedon these two predictions, species delimitation should be more efficient when usingmolecular markers experiencing high rates of gene flow. The present thesis was designed to test the hypotheses of this model. The biologicalmodel used was conifers, a group in which introgression and hybridization arecommon because of incomplete reproductive isolation. The species investigatedbelong to the genus Picea (spruce). We focused on two species complexes,represented by monographic clades in a phylogenetic study using the chloroplast genematK. All species studied occur in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) and adjacenthighlands. The phylogeography of these species complexes was reconstructed usingorganelle markers (mitochondrial DNA, mtDNA and chloroplast DNA, cpDNA). Inconifers, mtDNA and cpDNA have contrasted modes of inheritance. The former ismaternally inherited, transmitted by seeds experiencing little gene flow while thelatter is paternally inherited, transmitted by both pollen and seeds experiencing highlevels of gene flow. Therefore, uniparentally inherited mtDNA and cpDNA markersexperience different rates of gene flow in such a group, providing an ideal model to test the relationship between rates of gene flow, introgression and species delimitation.Two mtDNA fragments (nad1intron b/c; nad5 intron1) and three cpDNA fragments(ndhK-C；trnL-trnF；trnS-trnG) were sequenced for nine species belonging to thePicea asperata and P. likiangensis species complex.(1) Nine mtDNA and nine cpDNA haplotypes were detected in 459 individualsfrom 46 natural populations in five species of P. asperata complex. As found in mostconifer species studied so far, low variation is present in the two mtDNA intronsalong with a high level of differentiation among populations (GST = 0.90). In contrast,higher variation and lower differentiation among populations was found at cpDNAmarkers (GST = 0.56). The cpDNA, although far from being fully diagnostic, is morespecies-specific than mtDNA: four groups of populations were identified usingcpDNA markers, all of them related to species or groups of species, whereas formtDNA, geographical variation prevails over species differentiation. A literaturereview shows that mtDNA variants are often shared among related conifer species,whereas cpDNA variants are more species-specific. Hence, increased intraspecificgene flow appears to decrease differentiation within species but not among species.[...]