Historical Biogeography of endemic seed plant genera in the Caribbean: Did GAARlandia play a role?

ABSTRACT: The Caribbean archipelago is a region with an extremely complex geological history and an outstanding plant diversity with high levels of endemism. The aim of this study was to better understand the historical assembly and evolution of endemic seed plant genera in the Caribbean, by first determining divergence times of endemic genera to test whether the hypothesized Greater Antilles and Aves Ridge (GAARlandia) land bridge played a role in the archipelago colonization and second by testing South America as the main colonization source as expected by the position of landmasses and recent evidence of an asymmetrical biotic interchange. We reconstructed a dated molecular phylogenetic tree for 625 seed plants including 32 Caribbean endemic genera using Bayesian inference and ten calibrations. T

SUBMITTER: Nieto-Blazquez ME 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5723623 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature