The implications of Tertiary and Quaternary sea level rise events for avian distribution patterns in the lowlands of northern South America

Abstract

Aim To assess the correspondence between current avian distributions in the lowlands of northern South America with respect to the hypothesized importance of sea level rise and other events over the past 15 million years on speciation.Location Tropical lowlands of north-western South America. MethodsTo establish which bird taxa may have originated in each area of endemism, I examined the ranges of all bird species occurring in the Pacific and the Caribbean lowlands. To determine land and sea distribution during a sea level rise of 100 m in north-western South America and eastern Central America, I traced the 100 m contour line from the Geoatlas of Georama and the Global 30-Arc-Second Elevation Data (GTOPO30) produced by the US Geological Survey. Results During a sea level rise of ∼ 100 m, marine incursions would have occurred from the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Several areas of tropical forest and dry/arid vegetation would have been isolated, currently known as the Darién, Chocó, Nechí, Catatumbo, Tumbesian and Guajiran areas of animal and plant endemism. Main conclusions A large part of the high diversity of forest and nonforest birds and other animals and plants in the Pacific rain forest and the Caribbean woodland likely arose as the result of sea level rises, dispersal and other geological and climatic events.

Phylogeny and biogeography of paradoxical frogs (Anura, Hylidae, Pseudae) inferred from 12S and 16S mitochondrial DNA

“…4a and b) are concordant with the histories of the Amazon and Paraná basins. Only at the end of the Tertiary/early Quaternary did these two basins acquire their current shape, in response to the end of marine introgressions (Nores, 2004), local tectonics (Rossetti et al, 2005), and the epeirogenic uplift of the Brazilian and Guiana Shields and the northern part of the Andes. The uplift of the Brazilian Shield during the late Tertiary compartmentalized the landscape, with depressions such as the Pantanal and Guaporé forming between plateaus in the Brazilian Shield.…”

“…The Pantanal floodplain in the Paraná basin, for example, is younger than 3 million years (Assine, 2004), while the Amazon basin acquired its current anastomosed shape during the Pliocene/Pleistocene epochs (Rossetti et al, 2005). Geological evidence supports two cycles of marine incursions into the Amazon and Paraná basins in the middle and late Miocene, promoting extensive flooding of lowlands and isolation of three large land blocks, the Brazilian and Guiana Shields and the eastern slope of the Andes (Hallam, 1992;Hernandez et al, 2005;Nores, 2004).…”

The river-refuge hypothesis and other contributions of Marcio Ayres to conservation science

“…At the same time, Amazonian conservation has departed even further from speciation hypotheses. This is in part because discussion on Amazonian speciation continues unabated (Nores 2004), and conservation can hardly be justified on the basis of controversial science. Instead, conservation plans continue to unfold based on practical approaches based on better sampling, extensive mapping, large conferences of experts on different Amazonian taxa and, of course, an up-to-date measure of anthropogenic threats (Laurance et al 2002;Laurance et al 2000;Laurance et al 2004).…”

The historical biogeography of Pteroglossus aracaris (Aves, Piciformes, Ramphastidae) based on Bayesian analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences

“…Their present distributional range includes areas of endemism in the Pacific lowlands and Isthmus of Panama that coincide with areas of endemism presumed to have been isolated during the marine transgressions of the Pliocene and Pleistocene (Nores, 2004). For example, the split of P. torquatus, followed by P. frantzii, from the ancestors of P. erythopygius/P.…”

“…The above geological events we put forward as major vicariant forces driving the speciation among Pteroglossus aracaris are likely to have influenced the evolution of the Neotropical biota with comparable geographic distribution in tropical America (Bush, 1994;Nores, 1999Nores, , 2004Wesselingh and Salo, 2006). Similar patterns of temporal divergence have been independently suggested from molecular data for a growing number of congeneric species, including curassows and piping-guans (Grau et al, 2005;Pereira and Baker, 2004), parrots (Ribas et al, 2007), trogons (Moyle, 2005), monkeys (Collins and Dubach, 2001;Cortes-Ortiz et al, 2003), vesper mice and spiny rats (Galewski et al, 2005;Salazar-Bravo et al, 2001), bats (Lim, 2007;Stadelmann et al, 2007), catfishes (MontoyaBurgos, 2003), and geckos (Gamble et al, 2008).…”