A recently comparative phylogeography of five avian species on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau carried out by Fumin Lei’s research group revealed that three species mostly distributed on the platform region of the plateau experienced population expansion following the retreat of the extensive glaciation period (0.5–0.175 Ma). These results are at odds with the results from avian species of Europe and North America, where population expansions occurred after Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 0.023–0.018 Ma). A single refugium was identified in a restricted semi-continuous area around the eastern margin of the plateau, instead of multiple independent refugia for European and North American species. For the other two species distributed on the edge areas of the plateau (twite and black redstart), populations were maintained at stable levels. Edge areas are located on the eastern margin, which might have had little or no ice cover during the glaciation period. Thus, milder climate may have mitigated demographic stresses for edge species relative to the extremes experienced by platform counterparts, the current ranges of which were heavily ice covered during the glaciation period. Finally, various behavioural and ecological characteristics, including dispersal capacities, habitat preference and altitude specificity along with evolutionary history might have helped in shaping different phylogeographical structures appearing in these five species. The result is very important in well understanding the evolutionary history of avian fauna on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, and has been published in Molecular Ecology, 2010, 19, 338-351.