Temporal and palaeoclimatic context of the evolution of insular woodiness in the Canary Islands.

ABSTRACT: Insular woodiness (IW), referring to the evolutionary transition from herbaceousness toward woodiness on islands, has arisen more than 30 times on the Canary Islands (Atlantic Ocean). One of the IW hypotheses suggests that drought has been a major driver of wood formation, but we do not know in which palaeoclimatic conditions the insular woody lineages originated. Therefore, we provided an updated review on the presence of IW on the Canaries, reviewed the palaeoclimate, and estimated the timing of origin of woodiness of 24 insular woody lineages that represent a large majority of the insular woody species diversity on the Canaries. Our single, broad-scale dating analysis shows that woodiness in 60%-65% of the insular woody lineages studied originated within the last 3.2 Myr, during which M

SUBMITTER: Hooft van Huysduynen A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8427628 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature