Journal
BMC EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
Volume 16, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
BMC
DOI: 10.1186/s12862-016-0764-3
Keywords
Biodiversity; Cape Floristic Region; Diversification; Erica; Evolution
Categories
Funding
- South African National Research Foundation (NRF)
- Claude Leon Foundation
- DFG [PI1169/1-1]
- Ministerium fur Klimaschutz, Umwelt, Landwirtschaft, Natur- und Verbraucherschutz des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
- Faculty of Agriculture Lehr- und Forschungsschwerpunkt, Umweltvertragliche und Standortgerechte Landwirtschaft, Bonn University
- Landgard foundation
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Background: The disproportionate species richness of the world's biodiversity hotspots could be explained by low extinction (the evolutionary museum) and/or high speciation (the hot-bed) models. We test these models using the largest of the species rich plant groups that characterise the botanically diverse Cape Floristic Region (CFR): the genus Erica L. We generate a novel phylogenetic hypothesis informed by nuclear and plastid DNA sequences of c. 60 % of the c. 800 Erica species (of which 690 are endemic to the CFR), and use this to estimate clade ages (using RELTIME; BEAST), net diversification rates (GEIGER), and shifts in rates of diversification in different areas (BAMM; MuSSE). Results: The diversity of Erica species in the CFR is the result of a single radiation within the last c. 15 million years. Compared to ancestral lineages in the Palearctic, the rate of speciation accelerated across Africa and Madagascar, with a further burst of speciation within the CFR that also exceeds the net diversification rates of other Cape clades. Conclusions: Erica exemplifies the hotbed model of assemblage through recent speciation, implying that with the advent of the modern Cape a multitude of new niches opened and were successively occupied through local species diversification.
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