A dated phylogeny shows Plio-Pleistocene climates spurred evolution of antibrowsing defences in the New Zealand flora.

ABSTRACT: Some plant traits may be legacies of coevolution with extinct megafauna. One example is the convergent evolution of 'divaricate' cage architectures in many New Zealand lineages, interpreted as a response to recently extinct flightless avian browsers whose ancestors arrived during the Paleogene period. Although experiments have confirmed that divaricate habit deters extant browsers, its abundance on frosty, droughty sites appears consistent with an earlier interpretation as a response to cold, dry Plio-Pleistocene climates. We used 45 protein-coding sequences from plastid genomes to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the divaricate habit in extant New Zealand lineages. Our dated phylogeny of 215 species included 91% of New Zealand eudicot divaricate species. We show that 86% of extant

SUBMITTER: Maurin KJL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9298021 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature