Ice sheets promote speciation in boreal birds.

ABSTRACT: The premise that Pleistocene ice ages played an important role in generating present-day species diversity has been challenged by genetic data indicating that most of the youngest terrestrial species on Earth coalesced long before major glacial advances. However, study has been biased towards faunas distributed at low latitudes that were not directly fragmented by advancing ice sheets. Using mitochondrial sequence divergence and a molecular clock, we compared the coalescence times of pairs of avian species belonging to superspecies complexes from the high-latitude boreal forest with those of sub-boreal and tropical avifaunas of the New World. Remarkably, all coalescence events in boreal superspecies date to the Pleistocene, providing direct evidence that speciation was commonly initiated d

SUBMITTER: Weir JT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1691815 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature