Accumulation over evolutionary time as a major cause of biodiversity hotspots in conifers.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity hotspots are important for understanding how areas of high species richness form, but disentangling the processes that produce them is difficult. We combine geographical ranges, phylogenetic relationships and trait data for 606 conifer species in order to explore the mechanisms underlying richness hotspot formation. We identify eight richness hotspots that overlap known centres of plant endemism and diversity, and find that conifer richness hotspots occur in mountainous areas within broader regions of long-term climate stability. Conifer hotspots are not unique in their species composition, traits or phylogenetic structure; however, a large percentage of their species are not restricted to hotspots and they rarely show either a preponderance of new radiating lineages or old re

SUBMITTER: Sundaram M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6790781 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature