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Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America
The latitudinal richness gradient is a frequent topic of study on the modern landscape, but its history in deep time is much less well known. Here, we preliminarily evaluated the paleolatitudinal richness gradient of vascular plants for the Eocene (56-33.9 million years ago) and Oligocene (33.9-23 m...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
KeAi Publishing
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6112203/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30159457 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2016.06.002 |
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author | Harris, AJ. Walker, Cassondra Dee, Justin R. Palmer, Michael W. |
author_facet | Harris, AJ. Walker, Cassondra Dee, Justin R. Palmer, Michael W. |
author_sort | Harris, AJ. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The latitudinal richness gradient is a frequent topic of study on the modern landscape, but its history in deep time is much less well known. Here, we preliminarily evaluated the paleolatitudinal richness gradient of vascular plants for the Eocene (56-33.9 million years ago) and Oligocene (33.9-23 million years ago) epochs of North America north of Mexico using 201 fossil floras. We calculated the direction and shape of the gradient using quadratic regression to detect linear and curvilinear trends. We performed regressions for the Eocene and Oligocene as well as for informal time intervals within the Eocene: early, middle, and middle + late. We found that quadratic models better explain the data than linear models for both epochs as well as for the early Eocene. A roughly linear trend in the middle and middle + late intervals may reflect limited sampling of high latitude floras for those times. The curvilinear relationship was weak for the Eocene and the model showed a peak in richness at 45.5°N. The curvilinear relationship was much stronger for the Oligocene and the peak occurred at 48.5°N. In the Eocene, the mid-latitude peak in richness may be explained by mean annual temperature, which was probably higher at some mid-latitudes than at lower ones. For the Oligocene, the peak in richness at mid-latitudes may be explained by evolutionary diversification within the temperate zone or by increased aridity at low latitudes. We also assessed the latitudinal richness gradient of genera within modern floras in North America north of Mexico and we found a weak, curvilinear trend with a peak in richness at 31.5°N. Our results suggest that the latitudinal genus richness gradient of vascular plants in North America continued to develop into its modern structure following the Oligocene. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6112203 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | KeAi Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61122032018-08-29 Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America Harris, AJ. Walker, Cassondra Dee, Justin R. Palmer, Michael W. Plant Divers Article The latitudinal richness gradient is a frequent topic of study on the modern landscape, but its history in deep time is much less well known. Here, we preliminarily evaluated the paleolatitudinal richness gradient of vascular plants for the Eocene (56-33.9 million years ago) and Oligocene (33.9-23 million years ago) epochs of North America north of Mexico using 201 fossil floras. We calculated the direction and shape of the gradient using quadratic regression to detect linear and curvilinear trends. We performed regressions for the Eocene and Oligocene as well as for informal time intervals within the Eocene: early, middle, and middle + late. We found that quadratic models better explain the data than linear models for both epochs as well as for the early Eocene. A roughly linear trend in the middle and middle + late intervals may reflect limited sampling of high latitude floras for those times. The curvilinear relationship was weak for the Eocene and the model showed a peak in richness at 45.5°N. The curvilinear relationship was much stronger for the Oligocene and the peak occurred at 48.5°N. In the Eocene, the mid-latitude peak in richness may be explained by mean annual temperature, which was probably higher at some mid-latitudes than at lower ones. For the Oligocene, the peak in richness at mid-latitudes may be explained by evolutionary diversification within the temperate zone or by increased aridity at low latitudes. We also assessed the latitudinal richness gradient of genera within modern floras in North America north of Mexico and we found a weak, curvilinear trend with a peak in richness at 31.5°N. Our results suggest that the latitudinal genus richness gradient of vascular plants in North America continued to develop into its modern structure following the Oligocene. KeAi Publishing 2016-06-20 /pmc/articles/PMC6112203/ /pubmed/30159457 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2016.06.002 Text en Copyright © 2016 Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Harris, AJ. Walker, Cassondra Dee, Justin R. Palmer, Michael W. Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America |
title | Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America |
title_full | Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America |
title_fullStr | Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America |
title_full_unstemmed | Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America |
title_short | Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America |
title_sort | latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the eocene and oligocene of north america |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6112203/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30159457 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2016.06.002 |
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