Are Historical Biogeographical Events Able to Promote Biological Diversification?

Abstract

One of the goals of evolutionary biology is understanding how biological diversification change across spatial and temporal scales. Theoretically, it has been established that external (i.e., dispersals) and internal (i.e., origin of a key innovations) factors can modulate shifts in rates of species diversification. However, the role of historical events as trigger of species diversification rates have not been well understood in empirical studies. I reviewed the literature linking historical biogeographic events and species diversification in many groups. Many of studies conclude that dispersals can be associated with exceptional changes in species diversification rates in insular and mainland areas. I discuss the limitations of some approaches used to discover the link between historical biogeography and macroevolution. I propose some predictions under biogeographic scenarios to gain understanding in how historical events promote biological diversification. I suggest that future studies linking biogeography and macroevolution should incorporate ecologically-relevant traits to discern the mechanisms underlying these historical associations. Although new developments in phylogenetic comparative methods have been done, still is necessary more traditional field-based ecological and evolutionary research. The link between biogeography and diversification still remains narrative and a comprehensive approach is necessary to establish how diversification was triggered by historical events.

Mapping diversification metrics in macroecological studies: Prospects and challenges

“…This approach allows the inference from multiple process including sympatric speciation, allopatric speciation, founder-event speciation, range expansion (i.e., dispersal without speciation) and local extinction (i.e., range contractions) based on a time-calibrated phylogenetic tree and the occurrence of species in geographical regions (see also Matzke 2014 for more detailed description of the method). These explicit biogeographical approaches are promising in macroecological studies since they allow to test simultaneously a set of evolutionary process during the diversification of a clade in a region (Velasco 2018). In addition, with these new approaches it is possible to differentiate effectively between macroevolutionary sources and sink areas (Goldberg et al 2005, Castroviejo-Fisher et al 2014, Poe et al 2017).…”

“…Although parametric biogeographic approaches are still in their infancy (Sanmartín 2012, Matzke 2014, Dupin et al 2017), these methods allow us to evaluate macroevolutionary dynamics (i.e., speciation and extinction) in an explicit geographical context. These methods are statistical powerful and make use of a series of explicit geographic range evolution models (Velasco 2018).…”