Comparative phylogeography of Passerine birds with a circum-Amazonian distribution

Abstract

There are a number of common distributional patterns that have provided the foundations of our current knowledge of Neotropical biogeography. A distinctive pattern is the so-called "circum-Amazonian distribution", which expands across the forested lowlands south and east of Amazonia, the Andean foothills, the Venezuelan Coastal Range, and the Tepuis. To date, there is no clear understanding of the processes giving rise to this distribution. To understand the evolutionary history of taxa exhibiting this pattern it is necessary to test biogeographic hypotheses offering mechanistic explanations. Comparative phylogeography allows more accurate phylogeographic hypotheses for these taxa, as well as better population genetic parameters. Comprehensive comparative studies aiming at unraveling the evolutionary and biogeographic mechanisms underlying the circum-Amazonian distribution have not been conducted yet, and only scarce descriptive information has been published. Therefore, the objective of this work was to elucidate the historical and biogeographic mechanisms underpinning circum-Amazonian distribution by performing comparative genomic analyses of a group of Suboscine passerines. Ultraconserved Elements (UCEs) were obtained for eight taxonomic groups to estimate population parameters and genealogical trees. For the Thamnophilidae species were inferred demographic histories with momi2. The best models of each taxon were analyzed in a comparative framework to relate them with previously proposed biogeographic hypotheses for the Neotropics and to propose plausible biogeographical scenarios for the circum-Amazonian pattern. The circum-Amazonian distributional pattern has two main phylogeographic units: an Andean (plus Central America region) and an eastern-forested region (Atlantic Forest ecoregion, forested areas around southeast of Amazonia), interconnected by a northern and southern corridor, allowing biotic interchanges same lineages (e.g. migration rates, speciation), which generated information on the role of lineage-specific histories and idiosyncrasies in shaping circum-Amazonian populations.