Fossils, phylogenies, and the challenge of preserving evolutionary history in the face of anthropogenic extinctions.

ABSTRACT: Anthropogenic impacts are endangering many long-lived species and lineages, possibly leading to a disproportionate loss of existing evolutionary history (EH) in the future. However, surprisingly little is known about the loss of EH during major extinctions in the geological past, and thus we do not know whether human impacts are pruning the tree of life in a manner that is unique in the history of life. A major impediment to comparing the loss of EH during past and current extinctions is the conceptual difference in how ages are estimated from paleontological data versus molecular phylogenies. In the former case the age of a taxon is its entire stratigraphic range, regardless of how many daughter taxa it may have produced; for the latter it is the time to the most recent common ancestor sh

SUBMITTER: Huang D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4413323 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature