Conceptual and empirical advances in Neotropical biodiversity research

Antonelli, Alexandre; Ariza, María Oliva Rodríguez; Albert, James S.; Andermann, Tobias; Azevedo, Josué A. R.; Bacon, Christine D.; Faurby, Søren; Guedes, Thaís B.; Hoorn, Carina; Lohmann, Lúcia G.; Matos‐Maraví, Pável; Ritter, Camila Duarte; Sanmartín, Isabel; Silvestro, Daniele; Tejedor, Marcelo F.; Steege, Hans ter; Tuomisto, Hanna; Werneck, Fernanda P.; Zizka, Alexander; Edwards, Scott V.

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.3074

Cited by 16 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Thus, like in other tropical regions such as Madagascar (Brown et al ., 2014), no single model will be sufficient to explain patterns of diversification and diversity across tropical Africa. These models and mechanisms have similarly been suggested to explain biodiversity in other tropical regions such as the Neotropics (Gentry, 1989; Antonelli et al ., 2018 a ), Madagascar (Vences et al ., 2009) and South East Asia (Lohman et al ., 2011; Kooyman et al ., 2019). It will be interesting to compare the roles of these mechanisms among continents to explain the origin of tropical diversity at global scales. We still lack fundamental biodiversity information for tropical African taxa, including accurate taxonomy, ecological studies and estimates of distribution, compared to temperate or other tropical regions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tectonics, climate and the diversification of the tropical African terrestrial flora and fauna

et al. 2020

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Tropical Africa is home to an astonishing biodiversity occurring in a variety of ecosystems. Past climatic change and geological events have impacted the evolution and diversification of this biodiversity. During the last two decades, around 90 dated molecular phylogenies of different clades across animals and plants have been published leading to an increased understanding of the diversification and speciation processes generating tropical African biodiversity. In parallel, extended geological and palaeoclimatic records together with detailed numerical simulations have refined our understanding of past geological and climatic changes in Africa. To date, these important advances have not been reviewed within a common framework. Here, we critically review and synthesize African climate, tectonics and terrestrial biodiversity evolution throughout the Cenozoic to the mid‐Pleistocene, drawing on recent advances in Earth and life sciences. We first review six major geo‐climatic periods defining tropical African biodiversity diversification by synthesizing 89 dated molecular phylogeny studies. Two major geo‐climatic factors impacting the diversification of the sub‐Saharan biota are highlighted. First, Africa underwent numerous climatic fluctuations at ancient and more recent timescales, with tectonic, greenhouse gas, and orbital forcing stimulating diversification. Second, increased aridification since the Late Eocene led to important extinction events, but also provided unique diversification opportunities shaping the current tropical African biodiversity landscape. We then review diversification studies of tropical terrestrial animal and plant clades and discuss three major models of speciation: (i) geographic speciation via vicariance (allopatry); (ii) ecological speciation impacted by climate and geological changes, and (iii) genomic speciation via genome duplication. Geographic speciation has been the most widely documented to date and is a common speciation model across tropical Africa. We conclude with four important challenges faced by tropical African biodiversity research: (i) to increase knowledge by gathering basic and fundamental biodiversity information; (ii) to improve modelling of African geophysical evolution throughout the Cenozoic via better constraints and downscaling approaches; (iii) to increase the precision of phylogenetic reconstruction and molecular dating of tropical African clades by using next generation sequencing approaches together with better fossil calibrations; (iv) finally, as done here, to integrate data better from Earth and life sciences by focusing on the interdisciplinary study of the evolution of tropical African biodiversity in a wider geodiversity context.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A huge amount of data has been gathered in recent decades, but this is often only loosely integrated in biogeographic studies. Better interactions between these fields will take us a step closer to ‘a trans disciplinary’ biogeography (Antonelli et al ., 2018 a ) in the geodiverse region of tropical Africa.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tectonics, climate and the diversification of the tropical African terrestrial flora and fauna

et al. 2020

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“…The sampled community follows the usual neotropical pattern, where there are a large number of rare and few dominant species (Antonelli et al 2018). The two species that represented more than 90% of the collection were O. basalis and R. thoracicus thoracicus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversity of Cerambycidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) in the Cerrado of Central Brazil using a new type of bait

et al. 2021

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The Cerambycidae family (Insecta: Coleoptera) has approximately 38 thousand species. In Brazil, more than 4,300 species and 1,050 genera are registered, and despite the ecological and agricultural importance of this family, no study has yet been done in the Cerrado of the Distrito Federal (Brazil). The objective of this study was to evaluate the richness and abundance of Cerambycidae in the Cerrado area using two types of fruits (banana and pineapple), fermented with sugarcane juice, as bait and to verify whether the richness is influenced by climate variables. The work was carried out in an area of the cerrado sensu stricto at Água Limpa Farm in the Distrito Federal. Beetles were collected weekly using 40 bait traps with two types of fruits that remained in the field for 12 uninterrupted months (November 2013 to October 2014). The traps were installed 1.50 m above the ground level, distributed in four 80 m transects, and spaced 20 m apart. A total of 1,599 individuals, belonging to 13 genera and different 19 species, were collected. The main species were as follows: Oxymerus basalis (Dalman, 1823) representing 78.3%, Retrachydes thoracicus thoracicus (Olivier, 1790) representing 9.9%, and Chydarteres bicolor (Fabricius, 1787) representing 4.5% of the total specimens collected. There was a significant difference in richness and abundance of Cerambycidae among the baits evaluated, with the pineapple bait presenting the highest values. The greatest number of individuals and species occurred soon after the first rains, especially in November. Temporal variation was confirmed through Rayleigh’s uniformity test, following the seasonality of the Cerrado, with the greatest number of individuals and species found in the rainy season. Temperature and humidity influenced the richness of cerambycid beetles. This is the first work carried out with pineapple fermented with sugarcane juice as bait to capture Cerambycidae, and this type of bait proved to be efficient for the collection of insects, comparable in efficiency to the synthetic baits that are normally used. All species collected were new distribution records for the Distrito Federal (Brazil).

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“…Our knowledge on fish species occurrence and spatial distribution within the Amazon Basin is far from complete. Numerous new species are described each year 13,14 and some large areas are still unknown in several portions of the basin 15,16 . This was among the key motivations of the transnational collaborative project AmazonFish (https://www.amazon-fish.com/) that aimed to compile the most complete and up-to-date information currently available on freshwater fish species distribution for the entire Amazon drainage basin and to initiate scientific collecting expeditions in under-sampled areas to fill the gaps.…”

Section: Background and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

A database of freshwater fish species of the Amazon Basin

et al. 2020

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the amazon Basin is an unquestionable biodiversity hotspot, containing the highest freshwater biodiversity on earth and facing off a recent increase in anthropogenic threats. The current knowledge on the spatial distribution of the freshwater fish species is greatly deficient in this basin, preventing a comprehensive understanding of this hyper-diverse ecosystem as a whole. Filling this gap was the priority of a transnational collaborative project, i.e. the AmazonFish project -https://www.amazon-fish.com/. Relying on the outputs of this project, we provide the most complete fish species distribution records covering the whole Amazon drainage. The database, including 2,406 validated freshwater native fish species, 232,936 georeferenced records, results from an extensive survey of species distribution including 590 different sources (e.g. published articles, grey literature, online biodiversity databases and scientific collections from museums and universities worldwide) and field expeditions conducted during the project. This database, delivered at both georeferenced localities (21,500 localities) and sub-drainages grains (144 units), represents a highly valuable source of information for further studies on freshwater fish biodiversity, biogeography and conservation.Scientific Data | (2020) 7:96 | https://doi.collections from Peru 25,26 and by initiating sampling campaigns in detected gaps in Colombia, Peru and Brazil. All these spatial gaps in the database will also be prioritized in future updates through literature and web-based sources checking. Researchers holding fish distribution data from any of the current gaps or under-sampled areas (Fig. 2) and that wish to share these data are welcome to join the project. This information will be included with the complete source, after validation, in the next update of the database.

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Conceptual and empirical advances in Neotropical biodiversity research

Cited by 16 publications

References 27 publications

Tectonics, climate and the diversification of the tropical African terrestrial flora and fauna

Tectonics, climate and the diversification of the tropical African terrestrial flora and fauna

Diversity of Cerambycidae (Insecta: Coleoptera) in the Cerrado of Central Brazil using a new type of bait

A database of freshwater fish species of the Amazon Basin

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