Nine exceptional radiations plus high turnover explain species diversity in jawed vertebrates.

ABSTRACT: The uneven distribution of species richness is a fundamental and unexplained pattern of vertebrate biodiversity. Although species richness in groups like mammals, birds, or teleost fishes is often attributed to accelerated cladogenesis, we lack a quantitative conceptual framework for identifying and comparing the exceptional changes of tempo in vertebrate evolutionary history. We develop MEDUSA, a stepwise approach based upon the Akaike information criterion for detecting multiple shifts in birth and death rates on an incompletely resolved phylogeny. We apply MEDUSA incompletely to a diversity tree summarizing both evolutionary relationships and species richness of 44 major clades of jawed vertebrates. We identify 9 major changes in the tempo of gnathostome diversification; the most signif

SUBMITTER: Alfaro ME 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2715324 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature