Metapopulation vicariance in the Pacific genus Coprosma (Rubiaceae) and its Gondwanan relatives

Heads, Michael

doi:10.1071/sb16047

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…An alternative model for Anthospermeae proposes that the four main clades evolved more or less in situ by vicariance of a pan‐austral ancestor (Heads, in press). Subsequent dispersal of the subtribes has been restricted to South Africa and part of SE Australia, explaining the local overlap there.…”

Section: A Case‐study: Metapopulation Vicariance In a Continental Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metapopulation vicariance explains old endemics on young volcanic islands

Heads

2017

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Terrestrial plants and animals on oceanic islands occupy zones of volcanism found at intraplate localities and along island arcs at subduction zones. The organisms often survive as metapopulations, or populations of separate sub-populations connected by dispersal. Although the individual islands and their local subpopulations are ephemeral and unstable, the ecosystem dynamism enables metapopulations to persist in a region, more or less in situ, for periods of up to tens of millions of years. As well as surviving on systems of young volcanic islands, metapopulations can also evolve there; tectonic changes can break up widespread insular metapopulations and produce endemics restricted to fewer islands or even a single island. These processes explain the presence of old endemic clades on young islands, which is often reported in molecular clock studies, and the many distribution patterns in island life that are spatially correlated with tectonic features. Metapopulations can be ruptured by sea floor subsidence, and this occurs with volcanic loading in zones of active volcanism and with sea floor cooling following its production at mid-ocean ridges. Metapopulation vicariance will also result if an active zone of volcanism is rifted apart. This can be caused by the migration of an arc (by slab rollback) away from a continent or from another subduction zone, by the offset of an arc at transform faults and by sea floor spreading at mid-ocean ridges. These mechanisms are illustrated with examples from islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Endemism on oceanic islands has usually been attributed to chance, long-distance dispersal, but the processes discussed here will generate endemism on young volcanic islands by vicariance.

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Section: A Case‐study: Metapopulation Vicariance In a Continental Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metapopulation vicariance explains old endemics on young volcanic islands

Heads

2017

Cladistics

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“…Metapopulation vicariance is an alternative explanation of how organisms colonize oceanic islands (Heads 2006, 2009, 2011, 2017, 2018). The idea is in stark contrast to and rejects LDD and founder speciation.…”

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“…In metapopulation vicariance, island age is irrelevant because species on islands can be much older than the islands they inhabit, and therefore, it is argued to be inappropriate to use island age as a maximum age constraint in molecular dating analyses (Heads 2011; Pillon and Buerki 2017). Several examples of metapopulation vicariance come from the Pacific Ocean (Heads 2005, 2008, 2011), possibly best exemplified by the plant genus Coprosma (Rubiaceae: Heads 2017) (but see Cantley et al (2016) for an alternative interpretation of the generic history). Criteria to distinguish between LDD and local ecological dispersal have never been formulated; but Heads (2017, p. 423) has attempted to identify differences between the two mechanisms.…”

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“…Several examples of metapopulation vicariance come from the Pacific Ocean (Heads 2005, 2008, 2011), possibly best exemplified by the plant genus Coprosma (Rubiaceae: Heads 2017) (but see Cantley et al (2016) for an alternative interpretation of the generic history). Criteria to distinguish between LDD and local ecological dispersal have never been formulated; but Heads (2017, p. 423) has attempted to identify differences between the two mechanisms.…”

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Metapopulation Vicariance, Age of Island Taxa and Dispersal: A Case Study Using the Pacific Plant Genus Planchonella (Sapotaceae)

et al. 2019

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Oceanic islands originate from volcanism or tectonic activity without connections to continental landmasses, are colonized by organisms, and eventually vanish due to erosion and subsidence. Colonization of oceanic islands occurs through long-distance dispersals (LDDs) or metapopulation vicariance, the latter resulting in lineages being older than the islands they inhabit. If metapopulation vicariance is valid, island ages cannot be reliably used to provide maximum age constraints for molecular dating. We explore the relationships between the ages of members of a widespread plant genus (Planchonella, Sapotaceae) and their host islands across the Pacific to test various assumptions of dispersal and metapopulation vicariance. We sampled three nuclear DNA markers from 156 accessions representing some 100 Sapotaceae taxa, and analyzed these in BEAST with a relaxed clock to estimate divergence times and with a phylogeographic diffusion model to estimate range expansions over time. The phylogeny was calibrated with a secondary point (the root) and fossils from New Zealand. The dated phylogeny reveals that the ages of Planchonella species are, in most cases, consistent with the ages of the islands they inhabit. Planchonella is inferred to have originated in the Sahul Shelf region, to which it back-dispersed multiple times. Fiji has been an important source for range expansion in the Pacific for the past 23 myr. Our analyses reject metapopulation vicariance in all cases tested, including between oceanic islands, evolution of an endemic Fiji–Vanuatu flora, and westward rollback vicariance between Vanuatu and the Loyalty Islands. Repeated dispersal is the only mechanism able to explain the empirical data. The longest (8900 km) identified dispersal is between Palau in the Pacific and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, estimated at 2.2 Ma (0.4–4.8 Ma). The first split in a Hawaiian lineage (P. sandwicensis) matches the age of Necker Island (11.0 Ma), when its ancestor diverged into two species that are distinguished by purple and yellow fruits. Subsequent establishment across the Hawaiian archipelago supports, in part, progression rule colonization. In summary, we found no explanatory power in metapopulation vicariance and conclude that Planchonella has expanded its range across the Pacific by LDD. We contend that this will be seen in many other groups when analyzed in detail.

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“…In this issue we cover methods in conservation (Chen and Escalante 2017;Giraudo and Arzamendia 2017); the use of metapopulations to understand older distributions in Pacific islands (Heads 2017); utilising topographic units in understanding endemicity patterns in Atlantic Forests (Amorim and Santos 2017); a review of biogeographic units and the methods used to propose them (Ferrari 2017), as well as how this is done in the Neotropical region (Noguera-Urbano and Escalante 2017); the relationship between environmental factors and areas of endemism (Noguera-Urbano and Ferro 2017); and a new method on temporally slicing biotic areas (King and Ebach 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%