This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91851117), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (2019QZKK0503), the Research Program of Sino-Africa Joint Research Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (151542KYSB20210007), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0605203, 2019YFA0607100), CAS Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences (QYZDB-SSW-DQC043) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (42077052, 41825016 and 41871048). We thank Holly Slater and Francis Martin for the kind review invitation, Jianjun Wang’s group members for data collection, and numerous authors with relevant literature that could not be cited in the main text due to word limitation. JW especially appreciates Zhisheng An, Jizheng He, Qinglong Wu, Haiyan Chu, Xiangzhen Li, Gengxin Zhang, Yuan Ge, Yongqin Liu, Congcong Shen, Yu Luo and Zhongmin Dai for valuable comments, Zijian Wang for fund notice, and the NIGLAS and National Geographic (GEFC12-14, Air and Water Conservation Fund) for seed funds to initiate his past decade mountain studies.