Cradles and museums of generic plant diversity across tropical Africa

Abstract

Determining where species diversify (cradles) and persist (museums) over evolutionary time is fundamental to understanding the distribution of biodiversity and for conservation prioritization. Here, we identify cradles and museums of angiosperm generic diversity across tropical Africa, one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth.Regions containing nonrandom concentrations of young (neo-) and old (paleo-) endemic taxa were identified using distribution data of 1719 genera combined with a newly generated time-calibrated mega-phylogenetic tree. We then compared the identified regions with the current network of African protected areas (PAs).At the generic level, phylogenetic diversity and endemism are mainly concentrated in the biogeographically complex region of Eastern Africa. We show that mountainous areas are centres of both neo-and paleo-endemism. By contrast, the Guineo-Congolian lowland rain forest region is characterized by widespread and old lineages. We found that the overlap between centres of phylogenetic endemism and PAs is high (> 85%).We show the vital role played by mountains acting simultaneously as cradles and museums of tropical African plant biodiversity. By contrast, lowland rainforests act mainly as museums for generic diversity. Our study shows that incorporating large-scale taxonomically verified distribution datasets and mega-phylogenies lead to an improved understanding of tropical plant biodiversity evolution.

Management implications based on diversity patterns under climate change scenarios in a continental island biodiversity hotspot

“…4). It seems that in Crete, montane regions do not act just as diversity cradles, but also as diversity museumsa pattern observed in other parts of the world as well (e.g., Dagallier et al, 2019). Most paleo-endemism centres occur in or near ravines/gorges in western Crete and on the mountain massifs of eastern Crete (Fig.…”

Spatial phylogenetics of the Chinese angiosperm flora provides insights into endemism and conservation

“…Before conducting spatial phylogenetic analyses, we assessed the collection density of the spatial dataset to exclude areas with low sampling rates. Following Dagallier et al [33], we adopted as a threshold of at least 100 records in a grid cell. The collection density figure is shown in additional file 4 ( Figure S3).…”

“…Mishler et al [12] proposed an integrating method called categorical analysis of neo-and paleo-endemism (CANAPE) to quantitatively distinguish between centers dominated by neo-endemism (range-restricted short branches) or paleo-endemism (range-restricted long branches). PE and CANAPE methods add an evolutionary perspective to understanding endemism and have drawn substantial attention [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Finding concentrations of endemic taxa and rangerestricted OTUs provides a critical basis for conserving evolutionary history [5].…”

“…Mountains are frequently found to contain biodiversity hotspots and centers of endemism [3,6,15,33]. Mountainous regions with high topographical diversity harbor numerous microhabitats, which can form refuges by buffering disturbances.…”

“…Mountainous regions with high topographical diversity harbor numerous microhabitats, which can form refuges by buffering disturbances. At the same time, precipitous mountains are divided by river valleys and deep gorges shaping the highly dissected topography, which can contribute to speciation by vicariance [6,33,43]. Mountains are key features of China and host a substantial proportion of the plant species [44].…”