{"title":"Rethinking spatial history: envisioning a mechanistic historical biogeography","authors":"Eduardo D. Schultz, Joel Cracraft","doi":"10.1111/cla.12598","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Historical biogeography is the study of geographic distributions of taxa through space and time. Over the last 50 years, several methods have been proposed to reconstruct these histories. However, despite their particularities, conceptually they have been most often derived from the reconstruction of area relationships. Here we advocate that area cladograms lack explanatory power and that biogeography needs to move towards a more mechanistic approach. We discuss the ontological problems related to areas of endemism and their validity as biogeographic units. Specifically, we propose that areas of endemism are not discrete historical entities and that area-based analyses are inappropriate for analytical biogeography. Instead, we suggest that biogeographic analyses should focus on those spatial–geographic elements that cause diversification, namely barriers. We discuss how barriers have more discrete boundaries in space and time than do areas of endemism, which allows the identification of homologous units and the recovery of vicariant events. Reconstructing the history of vicariant events results in a better understanding of spatial evolution within a biota because barrier formation is the relevant causal mechanism of diversification. We end by acknowledging the largely ignored views of Peter Hovenkamp and his conceptual contributions to developing a mechanistic biogeography.</p>","PeriodicalId":50688,"journal":{"name":"Cladistics","volume":"40 6","pages":"653-662"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cladistics","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cla.12598","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Historical biogeography is the study of geographic distributions of taxa through space and time. Over the last 50 years, several methods have been proposed to reconstruct these histories. However, despite their particularities, conceptually they have been most often derived from the reconstruction of area relationships. Here we advocate that area cladograms lack explanatory power and that biogeography needs to move towards a more mechanistic approach. We discuss the ontological problems related to areas of endemism and their validity as biogeographic units. Specifically, we propose that areas of endemism are not discrete historical entities and that area-based analyses are inappropriate for analytical biogeography. Instead, we suggest that biogeographic analyses should focus on those spatial–geographic elements that cause diversification, namely barriers. We discuss how barriers have more discrete boundaries in space and time than do areas of endemism, which allows the identification of homologous units and the recovery of vicariant events. Reconstructing the history of vicariant events results in a better understanding of spatial evolution within a biota because barrier formation is the relevant causal mechanism of diversification. We end by acknowledging the largely ignored views of Peter Hovenkamp and his conceptual contributions to developing a mechanistic biogeography.
期刊介绍:
Cladistics publishes high quality research papers on systematics, encouraging debate on all aspects of the field, from philosophy, theory and methodology to empirical studies and applications in biogeography, coevolution, conservation biology, ontogeny, genomics and paleontology.
Cladistics is read by scientists working in the research fields of evolution, systematics and integrative biology and enjoys a consistently high position in the ISI® rankings for evolutionary biology.