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      Molecular phylogenetics reveal multiple tertiary vicariance origins of the African rain forest trees

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      1 , 3 , , 1 , 1 , 2
      BMC Biology
      BioMed Central

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          Abstract

          Background

          Tropical rain forests are the most diverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet. How this diversity evolved remains largely unexplained. In Africa, rain forests are situated in two geographically isolated regions: the West-Central Guineo-Congolian region and the coastal and montane regions of East Africa. These regions have strong floristic affinities with each other, suggesting a former connection via an Eocene pan-African rain forest. High levels of endemism observed in both regions have been hypothesized to be the result of either 1) a single break-up followed by a long isolation or 2) multiple fragmentation and reconnection since the Oligocene. To test these hypotheses the evolutionary history of endemic taxa within a rain forest restricted African lineage of the plant family Annonaceae was studied. Molecular phylogenies and divergence dates were estimated using a Bayesian relaxed uncorrelated molecular clock assumption accounting for both calibration and phylogenetic uncertainties.

          Results

          Our results provide strong evidence that East African endemic lineages of Annonaceae have multiple origins dated to significantly different times spanning the Oligocene and Miocene epochs. Moreover, these successive origins (c. 33, 16 and 8 million years – Myr) coincide with known periods of aridification and geological activity in Africa that would have recurrently isolated the Guineo-Congolian rain forest from the East African one. All East African taxa were found to have diversified prior to Pleistocene times.

          Conclusion

          Molecular phylogenetic dating analyses of this large pan-African clade of Annonaceae unravels an interesting pattern of diversification for rain forest restricted trees co-occurring in West/Central and East African rain forests. Our results suggest that repeated reconnections between the West/Central and East African rain forest blocks allowed for biotic exchange while the break-ups induced speciation via vicariance, enhancing the levels of endemicity. These results provide an explanation for present day distribution patterns and origins of endemicity for African rain forest trees. Moreover, given the pre-Pleistocene origins of all the studied endemic East African genera and species, these results also offer important insights for setting conservation priorities in these highly diversified but threatened ecosystems.

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          Most cited references67

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          Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present.

          Since 65 million years ago (Ma), Earth's climate has undergone a significant and complex evolution, the finer details of which are now coming to light through investigations of deep-sea sediment cores. This evolution includes gradual trends of warming and cooling driven by tectonic processes on time scales of 10(5) to 10(7) years, rhythmic or periodic cycles driven by orbital processes with 10(4)- to 10(6)-year cyclicity, and rare rapid aberrant shifts and extreme climate transients with durations of 10(3) to 10(5) years. Here, recent progress in defining the evolution of global climate over the Cenozoic Era is reviewed. We focus primarily on the periodic and anomalous components of variability over the early portion of this era, as constrained by the latest generation of deep-sea isotope records. We also consider how this improved perspective has led to the recognition of previously unforeseen mechanisms for altering climate.
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            Universal primers for amplification of three non-coding regions of chloroplast DNA.

            Six primers for the amplification of three non-coding regions of chloroplast DNA via the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have been designed. In order to find out whether these primers were universal, we used them in an attempt to amplify DNA from various plant species. The primers worked for most species tested including algae, bryophytes, pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms. The fact that they amplify chloroplast DNA non-coding regions over a wide taxonomic range means that these primers may be used to study the population biology (in supplying markers) and evolution (inter- and probably intraspecific phylogenies) of plants.
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              Speciation in amazonian forest birds.

              J Haffer (1969)
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                BMC Biol
                BMC Biology
                BioMed Central
                1741-7007
                2008
                16 December 2008
                : 6
                : 54
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Nationaal Herbarium Nederland, Wageningen branch, Biosystematics Group, Wageningen University, 6703 BL, Wageningen, The Netherlands
                [2 ]Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK
                [3 ]The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY, 10458-5126, USA
                Article
                1741-7007-6-54
                10.1186/1741-7007-6-54
                2628871
                19087283
                fc4243f8-df21-4615-8b33-5579eda819a3
                Copyright © 2008 Couvreur et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 20 June 2008
                : 16 December 2008
                Categories
                Research Article

                Life sciences
                Life sciences

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