Cenozoic history of the tropical marine biodiversity hotspot.

ABSTRACT: The region with the highest marine biodiversity on our planet is known as the Coral Triangle or Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA)^1,2. Its enormous biodiversity has long attracted the interest of biologists; however, the detailed evolutionary history of the IAA biodiversity hotspot remains poorly understood³. Here we present a high-resolution reconstruction of the Cenozoic diversity history of the IAA by inferring speciation-extinction dynamics using a comprehensive fossil dataset. We found that the IAA has exhibited a unidirectional diversification trend since about 25 million years ago, following a roughly logistic increase until a diversity plateau beginning about 2.6 million years ago. The growth of diversity was primarily controlled by diversity dependency and hab

SUBMITTER: Tian SY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11306107 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature