At a crossroads: The late Eocene flora of central Myanmar owes its composition to plate collision and tropical climate

Huang, Huasheng; Pérez-Pinedo, Daniel; Morley, Robert J.; Dupont‐Nivet, Guillaume; Philip, Annemarie; Win, Zaw; Aung, Day Wa; Licht, Alexis; Jardine, Phillip E.; Hoorn, Carina

doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2021.104441

Cited by 22 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 122 publications

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“…Neogene leaves attributed to Shorea are widely reported from India (summarized in Feng et al, 2013 ; Khan et al, 2016 ). Shorea -type pollen is found in Malesia from the Oligocene onwards ( Muller, 1981 ; Mohd Yakzan et al, 1996 ; Huang et al, 2021 ), including the Miocene of Brunei ( Anderson & Muller, 1975 ). More recent work from Brunei with SEM imaging reported grains of Shorea sp.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

First fossil-leaf floras from Brunei Darussalam show dipterocarp dominance in Borneo by the Pliocene

Wilf

Zou

Donovan

et al. 2022

PeerJ

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The Malay Archipelago is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, but it suffers high extinction risks due to severe anthropogenic pressures. Paleobotanical knowledge provides baselines for the conservation of living analogs and improved understanding of vegetation, biogeography, and paleoenvironments through time. The Malesian bioregion is well studied palynologically, but there have been very few investigations of Cenozoic paleobotany (plant macrofossils) in a century or more. We report the first paleobotanical survey of Brunei Darussalam, a sultanate on the north coast of Borneo that still preserves the majority of its extraordinarily diverse, old-growth tropical rainforests. We discovered abundant compression floras dominated by angiosperm leaves at two sites of probable Pliocene age: Berakas Beach, in the Liang Formation, and Kampong Lugu, in an undescribed stratigraphic unit. Both sites also yielded rich palynofloral assemblages from the macrofossil-bearing beds, indicating lowland fern-dominated swamp (Berakas Beach) and mangrove swamp (Kampong Lugu) depositional environments. Fern spores from at least nine families dominate both palynological assemblages, along with abundant fungal and freshwater algal remains, rare marine microplankton, at least four mangrove genera, and a diverse rainforest tree and liana contribution (at least 19 families) with scarce pollen of Dipterocarpaceae, today’s dominant regional life form. Compressed leaves and rare reproductive material represent influx to the depocenters from the adjacent coastal rainforests. Although only about 40% of specimens preserve informative details, we can distinguish 23 leaf and two reproductive morphotypes among the two sites. Dipterocarps are by far the most abundant group in both compression assemblages, providing rare, localized evidence for dipterocarp-dominated lowland rainforests in the Malay Archipelago before the Pleistocene. The dipterocarp fossils include winged Shorea fruits, at least two species of plicate Dipterocarpus leaves, and very common Dryobalanops leaves. We attribute additional leaf taxa to Rhamnaceae (Ziziphus), Melastomataceae, and Araceae (Rhaphidophora), all rare or new fossil records for the region. The dipterocarp leaf dominance contrasts sharply with the family’s <1% representation in the palynofloras from the same strata. This result directly demonstrates that dipterocarp pollen is prone to strong taphonomic filtering and underscores the importance of macrofossils for quantifying the timing of the dipterocarps’ rise to dominance in the region. Our work shows that complex coastal rainforests dominated by dipterocarps, adjacent to swamps and mangroves and otherwise similar to modern ecosystems, have existed in Borneo for at least 4–5 million years. Our findings add historical impetus for the conservation of these gravely imperiled and extremely biodiverse ecosystems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

First fossil-leaf floras from Brunei Darussalam show dipterocarp dominance in Borneo by the Pliocene

Wilf

Zou

Donovan

et al. 2022

PeerJ

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“…Fossil pollen types of Sapindaceae have also been extensively reported, including the widely distributed form-genus Cupanieidites, with affinity to the tribe Cupanieae. Cupanieidites is derived from the proposed J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof ancestors of the tribe Paullinieae, which originated in the Late Cretaceous of Africa and dispersed to India, the Americas and Australia (see the review in Huang, 2021;Huang et al, 2021) and Europe (e.g., Krutzsch, 1959aKrutzsch, , b, 1961Krutzsch, , 1969. For instance, Cupanieidites flaccidiformis (with affinity to Mischocarpus) was found in the Paleocene of Pakistan (Frederiksen, 1994), the middle Eocene of south Sulawesi, Indonesia (Morley, 1998) and late Eocene of central Myanmar (Huang et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cupanieidites is derived from the proposed J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof ancestors of the tribe Paullinieae, which originated in the Late Cretaceous of Africa and dispersed to India, the Americas and Australia (see the review in Huang, 2021;Huang et al, 2021) and Europe (e.g., Krutzsch, 1959aKrutzsch, , b, 1961Krutzsch, , 1969. For instance, Cupanieidites flaccidiformis (with affinity to Mischocarpus) was found in the Paleocene of Pakistan (Frederiksen, 1994), the middle Eocene of south Sulawesi, Indonesia (Morley, 1998) and late Eocene of central Myanmar (Huang et al, 2021). Other fossil pollen records include Alectryon-type from the middle Eocene of Germany (Hofmann and Gregor, 2018), Cardiospermum, Paullinia and Serjania from the late Eocene of Panama (Graham, 1985(Graham, , 1987, Paullinia and Serjania from the early to middle Miocene of Mexico (Chavez et al, 1993), and Pometia from the Miocene of Borneo (Muller, 1964).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Central Myanmar Basins (CMB), situated between the Indo-Burman Ranges and Sino-Burman Ranges (Fig. 1A), comprises most of Myanmar and has been a crossroads for plant dispersal between Laurasia and Gondwana since at least late Eocene, principally driven by the India-Asia collision and its tropical and protomonsoonal climate (Huang, 2021;Huang et al, 2021). This crossroads may persist until the modern day, and thus renders Myanmar as a global biodiversity hotspot (Myers et al, 2000) with c. 12,340 spermatophyte species (according to Kress et al, 2003, andYang et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This crossroads may persist until the modern day, and thus renders Myanmar as a global biodiversity hotspot (Myers et al, 2000) with c. 12,340 spermatophyte species (according to Kress et al, 2003, andYang et al, 2020). The CMB yields highly diverse palynofloras from the Eocene onwards (Potonié, 1960;Reimann and Aye Thaung, 1981;Soe Moe Lwin et al, 2017;Huang et al, 2020Huang et al, , 2021Huang, 2021), including among many others a diversity of Arecaceae (Huang et al, 2020) and Sapotaceae (Huang et al, 2021) pollen types.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Grimmipollis burmanica gen. et sp. nov.: New genus of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae) from the late Eocene of central Myanmar

Huang

Morley

Ham

et al. 2023

Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology

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Gaps in the protection of the amphibians of Myanmar—threat status, endemism, protected area coverage and One Plan Approach conservation

Borgwerth,

Scholten,

Lin

et al. 2024

Integrative Conservation

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Currently, 41% of amphibian species are threatened with extinction, leading to the ongoing amphibian crisis. In Myanmar, the amphibian diversity is still poorly understood, and, as a result, many conservation gaps remain. To increase the knowledge about Myanmar's amphibians and thus provide an opportunity to fill the gaps in conservation in the country, we assess the species in greater detail. To do so, we compile a species list of the amphibians of Myanmar through various sources and evaluate their threat status using the IUCN Red list. We perform richness analyses to compare the distribution areas of the amphibian species of Myanmar to the distribution of the protected areas (PAs) in the country. We evaluate the representation of Myanmar's amphibians in zoos worldwide through the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS) to check the implementation of the One Plan Approach to Conservation. Our results suggest that there are 152 amphibian species extant in Myanmar, of which 25 are endemic to the country. 4.6% (n = 7) of all species are classified as threatened, but counting those with insufficient available data as possibly threatened increases the number to 44.1% (n = 67). Of them, 40 species are not covered by any of Myanmar's PAs. That includes 28.6% of the threatened, 35.7% of the potentially threatened, and 48% of the endemic species. According to the ZIMS database, none of Myanmar's threatened, potentially threatened, or endemic amphibian species are kept in any zoo or aquarium worldwide, suggesting that the One Plan Approach is not sufficiently implemented as a conservation measure for Myanmar's amphibians. With this study, we show conspicuous gaps in the protection of Myanmar's amphibians and provide a list of the 36 most threatened species, recommending a possible prioritization for upcoming conservation actions.

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At a crossroads: The late Eocene flora of central Myanmar owes its composition to plate collision and tropical climate

Cited by 22 publications

References 122 publications

First fossil-leaf floras from Brunei Darussalam show dipterocarp dominance in Borneo by the Pliocene

First fossil-leaf floras from Brunei Darussalam show dipterocarp dominance in Borneo by the Pliocene

Grimmipollis burmanica gen. et sp. nov.: New genus of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae) from the late Eocene of central Myanmar

Gaps in the protection of the amphibians of Myanmar—threat status, endemism, protected area coverage and One Plan Approach conservation

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