Tectonics, climate and the diversification of the tropical African terrestrial flora and fauna

TLP Couvreur, G Dauby, A Blach‐Overgaard… - Biological …, 2021 - Wiley Online Library
Tropical Africa is home to an astonishing biodiversity occurring in a variety of ecosystems.
Past climatic change and geological events have impacted the evolution and diversification …

Beyond Genera Palmarum: progress and prospects in palm systematics

WJ Baker, J Dransfield - Botanical Journal of the Linnean …, 2016 - academic.oup.com
The systematic biology of the palm family (Arecaceae) is probably better known than that of
any other tropical plant family of comparable size. As a result, the palms are now regarded …

Analysis of 41 plant genomes supports a wave of successful genome duplications in association with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary

K Vanneste, G Baele, S Maere… - Genome research, 2014 - genome.cshlp.org
Ancient whole-genome duplications (WGDs), also referred to as paleopolyploidizations,
have been reported in most evolutionary lineages. Their attributed role remains a major …

Conserved ancestral tropical niche but different continental histories explain the latitudinal diversity gradient in brush-footed butterflies

N Chazot, FL Condamine, G Dudas, C Peña… - Nature …, 2021 - nature.com
The global increase in species richness toward the tropics across continents and taxonomic
groups, referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient, stimulated the formulation of many …

Linked canopy, climate, and faunal change in the Cenozoic of Patagonia

RE Dunn, CAE Strömberg, RH Madden, MJ Kohn… - Science, 2015 - science.org
Vegetation structure is a key determinant of ecosystems and ecosystem function, but
paleoecological techniques to quantify it are lacking. We present a method for reconstructing …

Conceptual and empirical advances in Neotropical biodiversity research

A Antonelli, M Ariza, J Albert, T Andermann, J Azevedo… - PeerJ, 2018 - peerj.com
The unparalleled biodiversity found in the American tropics (the Neotropics) has attracted
the attention of naturalists for centuries. Despite major advances in recent years in our …

Divergence times, historical biogeography, and shifts in speciation rates of Myrtales

BA Berger, R Kriebel, D Spalink, KJ Sytsma - Molecular Phylogenetics and …, 2016 - Elsevier
We examine the eudicot order Myrtales, a clade with strong Gondwanan representation for
most of its families. Although previous phylogenetic studies greatly improved our …

Global patterns and drivers of phylogenetic structure in island floras

P Weigelt, W Daniel Kissling, Y Kisel, SA Fritz… - Scientific reports, 2015 - nature.com
Islands are ideal for investigating processes that shape species assemblages because they
are isolated and have discrete boundaries. Quantifying phylogenetic assemblage structure …

Evolution of angiosperm seed disperser mutualisms: the timing of origins and their consequences for coevolutionary interactions between angiosperms and frugivores

O Eriksson - Biological Reviews, 2016 - Wiley Online Library
The origins of interactions between angiosperms and fruit‐eating seed dispersers have
attracted much attention following a seminal paper on this topic by T iffney (1984). This …

PalmTraits 1.0, a species-level functional trait database of palms worldwide

WD Kissling, H Balslev, WJ Baker, J Dransfield… - Scientific Data, 2019 - nature.com
Plant traits are critical to plant form and function—including growth, survival and
reproduction—and therefore shape fundamental aspects of population and ecosystem …