Journal
MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS AND EVOLUTION
Volume 54, Issue 2, Pages 512-523Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2009.09.020
Keywords
Biogeography; Ecological transitions; Bayesian phylogenetics; Maximum likelihood; Parsimony; Relaxed molecular clock dating; cpDNA; Malate synthase; Vicariance; Dispersal; Palms; Arecaceae
Funding
- Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan [14405006]
- Australian Research Council [DP0665253]
- Australian Research Council [DP0665253] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [14405006] Funding Source: KAKEN
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Eighteen of the 34 species of the fan palm genus Livistona (Arecaceae) are restricted to Australia and southern New Guinea, east of Wallace's Line, an ancient biogeographic boundary between the former supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana. The remaining species extend from SE Asia to Africa, west of Wallace's Line. Competing hypotheses contend that Livistona is (a) ancient, its current distribution a relict of the supercontinents, or (b) a Miocene immigrant from the north into Australia as it drifted towards Asia. We have tested these hypotheses using Bayesian and penalized likelihood molecular dating based on 4 Kb of nuclear and chloroplast DNA sequences with multiple fossil calibration points. Ancestral areas and biomes were reconstructed using parsimony and maximum likelihood. We found strong support for the second hypothesis, that a single Livistona ancestor colonized Australia from the north about 1017 Ma. Spread and diversification of the genus within Australia was likely favoured by a transition from the aseasonal wet to monsoonal biome, to which it could have been preadapted by fire-tolerance. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available