Insights of the PS3 Plenary Symposium Session on Saturday 10.01.2015
After a nice reception at the
Botanical Garden which ended very late, the attendees congregated at the
Auditorium of the University of Bayreuth next morning for the Plenary
Symposium. During the session labelled: “Paleogeography: The importance of
fossil data to species biogeography. Past, present and future”, the speakers
Alicia Stigall, Thomas Servais, Wolfgang Kiessling, Thomas Denk, Andrea Sánchez
and Catherine Badgley held presentations of a historical perspective of
Biogeography.
To name some examples of the
talks of this session, Stigall highlighted the difficulties of making
biogeographical analyses with paleontological data. However, using an approach
named Environmental niche modelling (ENM) is possible to incorporate into
biogeographic inference the temporal, spatial, and environmental information
provided by the fossil record, as a direct evidence of the extinct biodiversity
fraction.
On the other hand, Andrea Sánchez
explained some of the limitations of the fossil record: they represent a
fraction of the living information of ancestral times, and therefore the
biodiversity we see today is not representative of the historical one, especially
after scenarios of high extinction. Her research team analysed the phylogenetic
map of the Hypericum sp. and they found out that it did not correspond
with the fossil record. They analysed
the fossil data with a diversification–extinction–cladogenesis (DEC) model incorporating
a model of the fossil reconstructions. As fossil record provides information of
the location of the organisms, the climate as well as the ecological conditions
of the environment of the previous times, dispersal patterns could be
described. This allows to infer the past potential distribution and ecological
corridors and barriers for dispersal.
Finally, Catherine Badgley
explained a model of biotic responses to changes in earth history in terms of
biogeographical processes. Specifically, tectonic changes and other environmental
changes as change of sea level and climate change open and closes dispersal
corridors for species. He explain three examples that portrait this scenario:
in Miocene faunas of Pakistan and Spain, and in Quaternary faunas of South
Africa. In these three examples of mammals’ biogeography, he concluded how the
range of dispersal of these organisms was affected by climate change in
accordance of the models applied.
by Yrneh Ulloa
by Yrneh Ulloa
Picture from: http://www.palaeontologicalsociety.co.za
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