| Abstract Detail
IAPT Early Career Investigator Program: Life at the Edge Testo, Weston [1], Sessa, Emily [2], Barrington, David [3]. Into the trees and back again: major ecological shifts drive the radiation of Neotropical Phlegmariurus. The clubmoss family Lycopodiaceae is an ancient family of vascular land plants with a cosmopolitan distribution and an estimated 400 species globally. Nearly three-quarters of the family's species richness is comprised of members of the pantropical genus Phlegmariurus, which includes lineages that have adapted to a remarkable diversity of habitat types and ecological niches. The genus is especially diverse and taxonomically complicated in the American tropics, where species occur in humid habitats from 0 to 5000 meters elevation. By generating a densely sampled and robustly supported phylogeny, we infer the timing and tempo of the clade's diversification and use an array of macroevolutionary models to identify drivers of its exceptional evolutionary success. We demonstrate that the diversification of Neotropical Phlegmariurus is closely linked to the uplift of the northern Andes mountains, which provided opportunity for colonization of novel and highly fragmented "sky island" habitats that correspond to the modern paramo ecosystem. This work is the first to explicitly examine drivers of diversification in a group of Andean spore-dispersed plants and complements similar studies in angiosperms.
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1 - University of Florida, Department of Biology, 527 Bartram Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32601
2 - University Of Florida, Biology, Box 118525, 521A Bartram Hall, Gainesville, FL, 32611, United States
3 - University Of Vermont, Plant Biology, 111 Jeffords Hall, 63 Carrigan Drive, Burlington, VT, 05405, United States
Keywords:
Andes
diversification
lycophyte
paramo
Sky islands
systematics.
Presentation Type:
Session: SYM6, IAPT Early Career Investigator Program: Life at the Edge
Location: Tucson E/Starr Pass
Date: Wednesday, July 31st, 2019
Time: 8:30 AM
Number: SYM6001
Abstract ID:390
Candidate for Awards:None |
