Reconstructing the age and historical biogeography of the ancient flowering-plant family Hydatellaceae (Nymphaeales).

ABSTRACT:

Background

The aquatic flowering-plant family Hydatellaceae has a classic Gondwanan distribution, as it is found in Australia, India and New Zealand. To shed light on the biogeographic history of this apparently ancient branch of angiosperm phylogeny, we dated the family in the context of other seed-plant divergences, and evaluated its biogeography using parsimony and likelihood methods. We also explicitly tested the effect of different extinction rates on biogeographic inferences.

Results

We infer that the stem lineage of Hydatellaceae originated in the Lower Cretaceous; in contrast, its crown originated much more recently, in the early Miocene, with the bulk of its diversification after the onset of the Pliocene. Biogeographic reconstructions predict a mix of dispersal and

SUBMITTER: Iles WJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4030046 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature