Did lemurs have sweepstake tickets? An exploration of Simpson's model for the colonization of Madagascar by mammals

Stankiewicz, Jacek; Thiart, Christien; Masters, Judith; Wit, Maarten J. de

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2005.01381.x

Cited by 52 publications

(52 citation statements)

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“…Stankiewicz et al [2006] demonstrated that flotsam velocity stabilizes at the value corresponding to the surface current velocity within hours. The directions of the present currents and winds that characterize the Mozambique Channel are not conducive to successful dispersal events from Africa to Madagascar [Masters et al, 1995;Stankiewicz et al, 2006], although dispersal in the opposite direction can be achieved within 10 days [Stankiewicz et al, 2006]. This situation is likely to have prevailed for at least the last 50 million years, when India docked with Asia, setting up the major Indian Ocean circulation pattern.…”

Section: Foliamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The likelihood of traversing a vast expanse of ocean may have been increased in the Mozambique Channel by means of island-hopping across putative islands emergent along the DFZ from the Mid-Eocene to Early Miocene [McCall, 1997], and in the South Atlantic by shallower waters above the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Ceara and Sierra Leone Rises [Murray, 2001]. Murray's hypothesis is more likely in terms of the current and wind directions in the Mozambique Channel [Stankiewicz et al, 2006] and in the South Atlantic [Houle, 1999], but does not explain the absence of close relationships between the Malagasy and African taxa [Sparks and Smith, 2004, . Finally, even given the presence of 'stop-over points' along the way, the Mozambique Channel and Indian Ocean hardly qualify as 'minor saltwater barriers' [Briggs, 2003], neither does the South Atlantic pose 'a modest saltwater gap' [Briggs, 2003].…”

Section: Freshwater Fishesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reconciling the Origins of Africa, India and Madagascar with Vertebrate Dispersal Scenarios

Masters¹,

Wit²,

Asher³

2006

IJFP

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Africa, India and Madagascar were once part of the supercontinent of Gondwana. This land mass began to fragment approx. 170 million years ago, and by 83 million years, all of the major components we recognize today were separated by tracts of water. Madagascar’s fossil record and estimates of the timing of the extant vertebrate radiations in Madagascar are not easily reconciled with this history of fragmentation. Fossil faunas that lived prior to approx. 65 million years had a cosmopolitan flavour, but this was lost after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Phylogenetic reconstructions of most extant Malagasy vertebrate radiations indicate divergence times that postdate the End-Cretaceous (lemurs, tenrecs, cichlid fish) and even the Early Miocene (chameleons, carnivores, rodents). Most biogeographic explanations of these groups rely, therefore, on Simpson’s model of sweepstakes dispersal (see also cover figure), but there are significant problems in applying the model to migrations from Africa to Madagascar, although its application is not so intractable between India and Madagascar. Alternative migration routes for consideration lie: (1) along the suite of fracture zones between Antarctica and Africa/Madagascar (known as the Antarctic-Africa Corridor), which may have been exposed episodically above sea level; (2) along a series of submerged basaltic ridges/plateaus with known or suspected continental crust between Antarctica and Africa/Madagascar/India flanking the Antarctic-Africa Corridor (e.g. the Madagascar Ridge, Mozambique Ridge, Conrad Plateau, Gunnerus Ridge); (3) between Africa and Madagascar along the Davie Ridge (parts of which are known to have been exposed episodically above sea level); (4) along the Deccan hotspot corridor between India and greater Africa.

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Section: Foliamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Freshwater Fishesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconciling the Origins of Africa, India and Madagascar with Vertebrate Dispersal Scenarios

Masters¹,

Wit²,

Asher³

2006

IJFP

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“…However, present ocean currents allow for dispersal from Madagascar to Africa, but oppose reciprocal dispersal from Africa to Madagascar across the Mozambique Channel. If ocean currents were the same for most of the Cenozoic as they are today, they would not have facilitated west to east transoceanic dispersal across the Mozambique Channel because of the strong south -southwest flow of the Mozambique Current [153].…”

Section: The Importance Of Dispersalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The historical biogeography of Mammalia

Springer

Meredith

Janečka

et al. 2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

106

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Palaeobiogeographic reconstructions are underpinned by phylogenies, divergence times and ancestral area reconstructions, which together yield ancestral area chronograms that provide a basis for proposing and testing hypotheses of dispersal and vicariance. Methods for area coding include multi-state coding with a single character, binary coding with multiple characters and string coding. Ancestral reconstruction methods are divided into parsimony versus Bayesian/likelihood approaches. We compared nine methods for reconstructing ancestral areas for placental mammals. Ambiguous reconstructions were a problem for all methods. Important differences resulted from coding areas based on the geographical ranges of extant species versus the geographical provenance of the oldest fossil for each lineage. Africa and South America were reconstructed as the ancestral areas for Afrotheria and Xenarthra, respectively. Most methods reconstructed Eurasia as the ancestral area for Boreoeutheria, Euarchontoglires and Laurasiatheria. The coincidence of molecular dates for the separation of Afrotheria and Xenarthra at approximately 100 Ma with the plate tectonic sundering of Africa and South America hints at the importance of vicariance in the early history of Placentalia. Dispersal has also been important including the origins of Madagascar's endemic mammal fauna. Further studies will benefit from increased taxon sampling and the application of new ancestral area reconstruction methods.

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“…Most authors have ignored the problem and many continue to propose dispersal events for which there is no known analogue in the current ecology. For example, it is still widely believed that primates rafted across vast areas of open ocean (Fleagle, 1999), although this has never been observed (Stankiewicz et al, 2006, andMasters et al, 2007, have provided good critiques). Biologists have come to accept the idea that distribution and dispersal are often mysterious and paradoxical.…”

Section: Darwin Wrotementioning

confidence: 99%

Darwin’s changing views on evolution: from centres of origin and teleology to vicariance and incomplete lineage sorting

Heads¹

2009

Journal of Biogeography

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It is a strange fact that in many ways the first edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species is closer to modern neodarwinism than the sixth and last edition. Sometimes this is attributed to a decline in the quality of the argument, but the opposite interpretation is given here. It is suggested that Darwin's early work on evolution is naïve and based on the two creationist principles of centre of origin and teleology (panselectionism). This fusion later became the 'modern synthesis'. However, after the first edition of the Origin, Darwin developed a non-teleological synthesis that integrated natural selection with what he called 'laws of growth' -phylogenetic/morphogenetic trends or tendencies. Discussion of Darwin's later, more sophisticated model of evolution has been suppressed in the teleological modern synthesis, but similar ideas are re-emerging in current work on molecular phylogenetics and biogeography. This indicates that the ancestor of a group can be diverse in its morphology and its ecology, that this diversity can be inherited, and that groups usually originate over a broad region and not at a single point.

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Did lemurs have sweepstake tickets? An exploration of Simpson's model for the colonization of Madagascar by mammals

Abstract: The fossil records of the living orders of mammals do not extend much earlier than the latest Cretaceous/early Palaeocene (Alroy, 1999;Foote et al., 1999). If this evidence indeed reflects the time of origin of the orders, rather than indicating the inadequacy of the fossil record (Martin

Cited by 52 publications

References 56 publications

Reconciling the Origins of Africa, India and Madagascar with Vertebrate Dispersal Scenarios

Reconciling the Origins of Africa, India and Madagascar with Vertebrate Dispersal Scenarios

The historical biogeography of Mammalia

Darwin’s changing views on evolution: from centres of origin and teleology to vicariance and incomplete lineage sorting

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