Living on the edge: timing of Rand Flora disjunctions congruent with ongoing aridification in Africa

Pokorny, Lisa; Riina, Ricarda; Mairal, Mario; Meseguer, Andrea S.; Culshaw, Victoria; Cendoya, Jon; Serrano, Miguel; Carbajal, Rodrigo; Ortiz, Santiago; Heuertz, Myriam; Sanmartín, Isabel

doi:10.3389/fgene.2015.00154

Cited by 110 publications

(156 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Species of that clade lack any clear epizoochorous trait (except perhaps the short‐protruding rachilla of C. camptoglochin ). Nonetheless, this clade shows a remarkable distribution that includes disjunctions between and within Northern and Southern Hemispheres that are congruent with both Rand Flora (Pokorny et al, ; Mairal et al, ) and Gondwanan patterns (Givnish & Renner, ; Sanmartín & Ronquist, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

A tale of worldwide success: Behind the scenes of Carex (Cyperaceae) biogeography and diversification

Martín‐Bravo

Jiménez‐Mejías

Villaverde

et al. 2019

J of Sytematics Evolution

168

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The megadiverse genus Carex (c. 2000 species, Cyperaceae) has a nearly cosmopolitan distribution, displaying an inverted latitudinal richness gradient with higher species diversity in cold‐temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Despite great expansion in our knowledge of the phylogenetic history of the genus and many molecular studies focusing on the biogeography of particular groups during the last few decades, a global analysis of Carex biogeography and diversification is still lacking. For this purpose, we built the hitherto most comprehensive Carex‐dated phylogeny based on three markers (ETS–ITS–matK), using a previous phylogenomic Hyb‐Seq framework, and a sampling of two‐thirds of its species and all recognized sections. Ancestral area reconstruction, biogeographic stochastic mapping, and diversification rate analyses were conducted to elucidate macroevolutionary biogeographic and diversification patterns. Our results reveal that Carex originated in the late Eocene in E Asia, where it probably remained until the synchronous diversification of its main subgeneric lineages during the late Oligocene. E Asia is supported as the cradle of Carex diversification, as well as a “museum” of extant species diversity. Subsequent “out‐of‐Asia” colonization patterns feature multiple asymmetric dispersals clustered toward present times among the Northern Hemisphere regions, with major regions acting both as source and sink (especially Asia and North America), as well as several independent colonization events of the Southern Hemisphere. We detected 13 notable diversification rate shifts during the last 10 My, including remarkable radiations in North America and New Zealand, which occurred concurrently with the late Neogene global cooling, which suggests that diversification involved the colonization of new areas and expansion into novel areas of niche space.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

A tale of worldwide success: Behind the scenes of Carex (Cyperaceae) biogeography and diversification

Martín‐Bravo

Jiménez‐Mejías

Villaverde

et al. 2019

J of Sytematics Evolution

168

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“…The climatic and geographical history of the African continent was briefly reviewed by Pokorny et al (2015) in their study of Rand Flora patterns. Africa gradually went from an initially wet and warm climate that allowed diversification of numerous taxa in West Africa (Plana, 2004), followed by a continental aridification (Axelrod & Raven, 1978) and subsequent transitions between forest and savanna in more recent times (Maley, 2000;Bonnefille, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights on the evolutionary origin of Detarioideae, a clade of ecologically dominant tropical African trees

et al. 2017

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African tropical forests are generally considered less diverse than their Neotropical and Asian counterparts. By contrast, the Detarioideae is much more diverse in Africa than in South America and Asia. To better understand the evolution of this contrasting diversity pattern, we investigated the biogeographical and ecological origin of this subfamily, testing whether they originated in dry biomes surrounding the Tethys Seaway as currently hypothesized for many groups of Leguminosae. We constructed the largest time-calibrated phylogeny for the subfamily to date, reconstructed ancestral states for geography and biome/habitat, estimated diversification and extinction rates, and evaluated biome/habitat and geographic shifts in Detarioideae. The ancestral habitat of Detarioideae is postulated to be a primary forest (terra firme) originated in Africa-South America, in the early Palaeocene, after which several biome/habitat and geographic shifts occurred. The origin of Detarioideae is older than previous estimates, which postulated a dry (succulent) biome origin according to the Tethys Seaway hypothesis, and instead we reveal a post Gondwana and terra firme origin for this early branching clade of legumes. Detarioideae include some of the most dominant trees in evergreen forests and have likely played a pivotal role in shaping continental African forest diversity.

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“…The assembly of an island flora is an accumulative process, acting over millions of years. The extended temporal dimension introduces uncertainties to the estimation of island source regions because the climate, habitat distribution, position, size and shape of both islands (Whittaker et al, 2008;Weigelt et al, 2016) and source regions (Galley & Linder, 2006;Pokorny et al, 2015) may have changed considerably since colonization. Cronk (1987) illustrates this for the flora of Saint Helena, which is mostly derived from a now-extinct wet forest flora that occupied large parts of Southern Africa during the Miocene.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disharmony of the world’s island floras

König

Weigelt

Taylor

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Aim: Disharmony is a key concept in island biology that describes the imbalance in the representation of higher taxa on islands compared to their mainland source regions. Although there are strong theoretical arguments for the differential colonization success of different taxa on islands, the empirical evidence for disharmony remains largely anecdotal. Here, we develop a novel method for delineating island source regions and present the first global quantitative assessment of island disharmony.Location: Global. Time period: Recent.Major taxa studied: Vascular plants. Methods:We developed a generalizable method for estimating the source regions of an island flora based on statistical predictions of species turnover. We then designed two metrics to investigate disharmony from an island-and a taxon-centered perspective. First, we used linear mixed effects models to analyse the overall taxonomic bias of 305 island floras (compositional disharmony) as a function of geographical and climatic island features. Second, we applied linear models to examine the over-or under-representation of 450 vascular plant families on islands (representational disharmony) as a function of family size, age, higher taxonomic group and family-specific functional traits. Results:We found that compositional disharmony scales positively with island isolation and negatively with island area, and is strongly modulated by climatic variables. In contrast, the relationship between representational disharmony and family-specific characteristics was weaker. We found significant effects of family species richness and pollination syndrome, whereas family age and all other tested functional traits remained without effect. Conclusions:The taxonomic scope of the disharmony concept has historically limited its wider applicability, because higher taxa are inconsistent ecological proxies. However, our results provide a strong foundation for integrating disharmony with quantitative functional and phylogenetic approaches in order to gain a deeper understanding of assembly processes on islands.

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Living on the edge: timing of Rand Flora disjunctions congruent with ongoing aridification in Africa

Cited by 110 publications

References 87 publications

A tale of worldwide success: Behind the scenes of Carex (Cyperaceae) biogeography and diversification

A tale of worldwide success: Behind the scenes of Carex (Cyperaceae) biogeography and diversification

Insights on the evolutionary origin of Detarioideae, a clade of ecologically dominant tropical African trees

Disharmony of the world’s island floras

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