scholarly journals Biogeography of Neotropical Meliaceae: geological connections, fossil and molecular evidence revisited

Author(s):  
Alexandra N. Muellner-Riehl ◽  
Blanca M. Rojas-Andrés

AbstractWe here provide, first, a general introduction into the woody angiosperm family Meliaceae, including updated numbers of the genera and species found in different parts of the globe, paying attention to geographic centres of diversity and patterns of endemism. Second, and more specifically, we review the latest literature concerning land connections (i) between Eurasia and North America, (ii) between North America and South America, as well as (iii) dispersal paths between Africa and South America that have existed since the proposed evolutionary origin of modern Meliaceae, i.e. from the Upper Cretaceous onwards (ca. 100 Million years ago). Comparing geological evidence with the fossil record as well as biogeographic studies, there is indication that the nowadays pantropically distributed family has made use of all these three routes. Five out of the eight modern Neotropical genera have a fossil record, namely Carapa Aubl., Cedrela P. Browne, Guarea F. Allam., Swietenia Jacq., and Trichilia P. Browne. Carapa and Trichilia have a modern transatlantic disjunction (distribution in Africa, Central and South America), and a fossil record in Africa and North/Central America (Trichilia), or Africa and Eurasia (Carapoxylon). Cedrela has a rich fossil record in Eurasia and the Americas. The global decrease in temperatures and a lack of Cedrela fossils in North America from the Late Miocene onwards suggest the genus had gone extinct there by that time, leading to its modern distribution in Central and South America. Oligocene to Pliocene fossils of Guarea, Swietenia and Trichilia in Central American key regions support biotic interchange between North and South America at various times.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 200317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon G. Scarpetta

Teiid lizards are well represented in the fossil record and are common components of modern ecosystems in North and South America. Many fossils were referred to the cnemidophorine teiid group (whiptails, racerunners and relatives), particularly from North America. However, systematic interpretations of morphological features in cnemidophorines were hampered by the historically problematic taxonomy of the clade, and the biogeography and chronology of cnemidophorine evolution in North America is poorly understood from the fossil record. Few fossil cnemidophorines were identified with an apomorphy-based diagnosis, and there are almost no fossil cnemidophorines that could be used to anchor node calibrations. Here, I describe a cnemidophorine from the Miocene Ogallala Group of Nebraska and diagnose the fossil using apomorphies. In that process, I clarify the systematic utility of several morphological features of cnemidophorine lizards. I refer the fossil to the least inclusive clade containing Aspidoscelis , Holcosus and Pholidoscelis . The most conservative minimum age of the locality of the fossil is a fission-track date of 6.3 Ma, but mammal biochronology provides a more refined age of 9.4 Ma, which can be used as a minimum age for the crown cnemidophorine clade in divergence time analyses. The fossil indicates that a cnemidophorine lineage that does not live in Nebraska today inhabited the area during the Miocene. I refrain from naming a new taxon pending discovery of additional fossil material of the lineage to which the fossil belonged.


2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Sames ◽  
Robin Whatley ◽  
Michael E. Schudack

Abstract. The genus Praecypridea gen. nov. (Cypridoidea, Family Cyprideidae Martin, 1940) is described and thus far comprises four species: the type species Praecypridea acuticyatha (Schudack, 1998) comb. nov., Praecypridea postelongata (Oertli, 1957) comb. nov., Praecypridea suprajurassica (Mojon, Haddoumi & Charriére, 2009) comb. nov. and Praecypridea acuta (Moos, 1959 in Wicher, 1959) comb. nov. Representatives of the new genus have been described from the Middle to Late Jurassic of Europe, North America and Africa and the Early Cretaceous of South America, with other presumed representatives also occurring in the Early Cretaceous. Species of Praecypridea are considered to represent members of the ancestral lineage of the extinct genus Cypridea Bosquet, representatives of which flourished in non-marine habitats of latest Jurassic to Early Cretaceous age and account for the first period of abundance of the non-marine Cypridoidea.


2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1885) ◽  
pp. 20180843 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Bona ◽  
Martín D. Ezcurra ◽  
Francisco Barrios ◽  
María V. Fernandez Blanco

Caimanines are crocodylians currently restricted to South and Central America and the oldest members are from lower Palaeocene localities of the Salamanca Formation (Chubut Province, Argentina). We report here a new caimanine from this same unit represented by a skull roof and partial braincase. Its phylogenetic relationships were explored in a cladistic analysis using standard characters and a morphogeometric two-dimensional configuration of the skull roof. The phylogenetic results were used for an event-based supermodel quantitative palaeobiogeographic analysis. The new species is recovered as the most basal member of the South American caimanines, and the Cretaceous North American lineage ‘ Brachychampsa and related forms' as the most basal Caimaninae. The biogeographic results estimated north-central North America as the ancestral area of Caimaninae, showing that the Cretaceous and Palaeocene species of the group were more widespread than thought and became regionally extinct in North America around the Cretaceous–Palaeocene boundary. A dispersal event from north-central North America during the middle Late Cretaceous explains the arrival of the group to South America. The Palaeogene assemblage of Patagonian crocodylians is composed of three lineages of caimanines as a consequence of independent dispersal events that occurred between North and South America and within South America around the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary.


1987 ◽  
Vol 94 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 333-335
Author(s):  
Lynn Siri Kimsey

The chrysidid tribe Elampini comprises a diverse group of genera. There are a number of small (1-3 species) highly derived genera in this group. Nearly all of these occur in 2 regions, southwestern North America and the area comprising the Middle East, southern USSR and North Africa. The small North American genera are Hedychreides Bohart, Microchridium Bohart, Minymischa Kimsey, Pseudolopyga Bodenstein and Xerochrum Bobart. Those in the latter region include: Haba Semenov, Prochridium Linsenmaier and the new genus, Adelopyga, described below. One genus, Muesebeckidium Krombein, occurs in both North and South America.The following abbreviations are used: F = flagellomere, MOD = midocellus diameter, PD = puncture diameter, Rs = forewing radial sector, and S = gastral sternum.


1970 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 258-270
Author(s):  
Adam Kubasik

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century a large group of Galician Ruthenians emigrated to North America and the United States and Canada, South America - mainly to Argentina and Brazil. Sheptytsky visited North America in 1910. He met with Ukrainian Greek Catholic immigrant communities in the United States and Canada. In 1921, he visited the USA and Canada again. In 1922 he arrived to Argentina and Brazil. He did not conduct open political agitation. However, some of his speeches have an anti-Polish character.


Author(s):  
Jeremiah O. Piersante ◽  
Russ. S. Schumacher ◽  
Kristen L. Rasmussen

AbstractEnsemble forecasts using the WRF Model at 20-km grid spacing with varying parameterizations are used to investigate and compare precipitation and atmospheric profile forecast biases in North and South America. By verifying a 19-member ensemble against NCEP Stage IV precipitation analyses, it is shown that the cumulus parameterization (CP), in addition to precipitation amount and season, had the largest influence on precipitation forecast skill in North America during 2016-2017. Verification of an ensemble subset against operational radiosondes in North and South America finds that forecasts in both continents feature a substantial mid-level dry bias, particularly at 700 hPa, during the warm season. Case-by-case analysis suggests that large mid-level error is associated with mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) east of the high terrain and westerly subsident flow from the Rocky and Andes Mountains in North and South America. However, error in South America is consistently greater than North America. This is likely attributed to the complex terrain and higher average altitude of the Andes relative to the Rockies, which allow for a deeper low-level jet and long-lasting MCSs, both of which 20-km simulations struggle to resolve. In the wake of data availability from the RELAMPAGO field campaign, the authors hope that this work motivates further comparison of large precipitating systems in North and South America, given their high impact in both continents.


Phytotaxa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 427 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-79
Author(s):  
MONIKA WOŹNIAK-CHODACKA

Oenothera Linnaeus (1753: 346) (Onagraceae) is indigenous to North America (Dietrich et al. 1997), where the great diversity of the genus is reflected by its division into 18 sections and several subsections and series (Wagner et al. 2007). At different times and circumstances, particular evening-primrose species have naturalized in other parts of the world—currently they are known from nearly all continents: North and South America, Asia, Australia, Africa and Europe as well (Cleland 1972, Dietrich et al. 1997, Rostański et al. 2004). Reaching new lands, they began to spread and hybridize with each other, which might have resulted in the origin of new species, unknown from the native area (Dietrich et al. 1997).


1905 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 224-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. R. Cowper Reed

In North and South America and in South Africa there is a considerable variety of types of the Dalmaniles-branch in the Devonian period which have in many cases received distinctive subgeneric names; but species retaining the typical characters of the Silurian forms persist at any rate in North America. Many of these Devonian forms show incomplete second lateral furrows on the glabella, these furrows not reaching the axial furrows and causing a partial coalescence of the two middle lateral lobes. This tendency towards the fusion of the first and second lateral lobes of the glabella is a departure from the perfect segmentation found in typical Silurian members of Dalmanites, and has caused Clarke to group all such forms together into the subgenus or section Synphoria. This type of structure, as Van Ingen has recently shown, is not unknown amongst the Silurian species of Dalmanites in America, but it finds its most pronounced development in Devonian time and occurs in the groups Coronura, Corycephalus, Odontocephalus, and Probolium, all of which are put by Clarke in the section Synphoria. The marginal ornamentation and different processes on the pygidium and head-shield on which these four groups have been founded are scarcely of the same structural importance as the modifications of the glabellar segmentation. As in other families, the spinosity of these forms is the symbol of a last expiring effort before extinction.


1989 ◽  
Vol 67 (12) ◽  
pp. 2859-2863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon F. Bennett ◽  
Michael A. Peirce

Hepatozoon parus n.sp. is described from the chickadees and titmice (Paridae) in North America and the United Kingdom. Hepatozoon atticorae (de Beaurepaire Aragão, 1911) Hoare, 1924 from swallows (Hirundinidae) is redescribed and the parasite is compared from hosts from North and South America, Jamaica, Europe, and South Africa.


1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 577 ◽  
Author(s):  
AM Anton ◽  
HE Connor

Flowers in the cosmopolitan genus Poa L. are predominantly hermaphrodite but many departures from this sex form occur in the New World. Dioecism is primarily a South American breeding system with about three times as many dioecious species as in the rest of the world. Gynomonoecism is a Central and South American trait heavily represented in Andean Peru and Bolivia. This zone of gynomonoecism separates dioecism in North and South America. Gynodioecism, a convenient evolutionary position on the pathway to dioecism, is relatively infrequent and in North America is of indeterminate form in several taxa. Apomixis has long been recognised in European Pea; in western North America, apospory has invaded dioecious species and generated populations of pistillate plants. In Peru and Bolivia, several taxa are composed exclusively of plants with pistillate flowers, but these have arisen from gynomonoecious progenitors. Poa is of Eurasian origin and migrated to North America and thence to South America. Sex-form kinds and frequencies are in stark contrast in the two parts of the continent, but are explicable in evolutionary terms. The selection pressures generating the deviations from hermaphroditism and their timing are unknown.


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