Environmental energy and evolutionary rates in flowering plants

The latitudinal gradient in species richness is a pervasive feature of the living world, but its underlying causes remain unclear. We evaluated the hypothesis that environmental energy drives evolutionary rates and thereby diversification in flowering plants. We estimated energy levels across angios...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 2004-10, Vol.271 (1553), p.2195-2200
Main Authors: Davies, T.J, Savolainen, V, Chase, M.W, Moat, J, Barraclough, T.G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angiosperms
Biodiversity
Biological taxonomies
Energy
Environment
Environmental Energy
Evolution
Evolution, Molecular
Evolutionary Rates
Evolutionary theories
Flowering Plants
Geography
Linear Models
Magnoliopsida - physiology
Molecular evolution
Phylogeny
Plant Transpiration - physiology
Plants
Regression Analysis
Sisters
Solar Energy
Speciation
Species Richness
Temperature
Ultraviolet Rays
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Summary:The latitudinal gradient in species richness is a pervasive feature of the living world, but its underlying causes remain unclear. We evaluated the hypothesis that environmental energy drives evolutionary rates and thereby diversification in flowering plants. We estimated energy levels across angiosperm family distributions in terms of evapotranspiration, temperature and UV radiation taken from satellite and climate databases. Using the most comprehensive DNA-based phylogenetic tree for angiosperms to date, analysis of 86 sister-family comparisons shows that molecular evolutionary rates have indeed been faster in high-energy regions, but that this is not an intermediate step between energy and diversity. Energy has strong, but independent effects on both species richness and molecular evolutionary rates.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
DOI:10.1098/rspb.2004.2849