Revisiting Amazonian phylogeography: insights into diversification hypotheses and novel perspectives
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REVIEW
Revisiting Amazonian phylogeography: insights into diversification hypotheses and novel perspectives Rafael N. Leite & Duke S. Rogers
Received: 16 October 2012 / Accepted: 2 May 2013 # Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik 2013
Abstract The Amazon Basin harbors one of the richest biotas on Earth, such that a number of diversification hypotheses have been formulated to explain patterns of Amazonian biodiversity and biogeography. For nearly two decades, phylogeographic approaches have been applied to better understand the underlying causes of genetic differentiation and geographic structure among Amazonian organisms. Although this research program has made progress in elucidating several aspects of species diversification in the region, recent methodological and theoretical developments in the discipline of phylogeography will provide new perspectives through more robust hypothesis testing. Herein, we outline central aspects of Amazonian geology and landscape evolution as well as climate and vegetation dynamics through the Neogene and Quaternary to contextualize the historical settings considered by major hypotheses of diversification. We address each of these hypotheses by reviewing key phylogeographic papers and by expanding their respective predictions. We also propose future directions for devising and testing hypotheses. Specifically, combining the exploratory power of phylogeography with the statistical rigor of coalescent methods will greatly expand analytical inferences on the evolutionary history of Amazonian biota. Incorporation of non-genetic data from Earth science disciplines into the phylogeographic approach is key Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13127-013-0140-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. R. N. Leite (*) : D. S. Rogers Department of Biology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA e-mail: [email protected] D. S. Rogers Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
to a better understanding of the influence of climatic and geophysical events on patterns of Amazonian biodiversity and biogeography. In addition, achieving such an integrative enterprise must involve overcoming issues such as limited geographic and taxonomic sampling. These future challenges likely will be accomplished by a combination of extensive collaborative research and incentives for conducting basic inventories. Keywords Amazonia . Terrestrial vertebrates . Biogeography . Evolutionary history . Phylogeography . Diversification hypothesis . Predictions . Coalescent
Introduction The Amazon drainage basin is a major component of the Neotropical region that includes an area of over 8 million km2 comprised mainly of lowland rainforest habitats (Sioli 1984). It extends across South America from the eastern Andean slopes towards the Atlantic coast and across the Brazilian and Guiana plateaus. There is large horizontal variation in relief across the basin (Bigarella and Ferreira 1985), and
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