[Taxacom] Vicariated Hawaii [was Seed plants of Fiji]

[Neal Evenhuis]

At 5:36 PM -0500 11/15/06, John Grehan wrote:
>What is the Lemuria remark supposed to mean? Does it mean that you have
>already decided the answer to the Pacific that does not allow for a
>vicariant origin?

John:
I read Karl's inclusion of Lemuria in his reply to you as a 
"question", not a "remark". If not Lemuria, then what about Mu? or 
the Darwin Rise? East Pacific Rise? A comet or asteroid? These are 
all questions, not remarks. And we need answers to those questions. 
All those questions source areas have been postulated (although I 
have to admit it will be a stretch to pull out the asteroid reference 
but I think I have it somewhere).

So, I'm curious too. And I would bet dollars to donuts that a lot of 
folks doing Hawaiian biology (whether we live in Hawaii [e.g., me], 
have lived in Hawaii [e.g., Karl], or wish to live in Hawaii [e.g., 
Tom]) would be thrilled to know where our biota vicariated from.

However, maybe the inference is that one has to assume a closed 
Pacific (a la McCarthy) in the Late Cretaceous and that the portion 
of the Hawaiian chain that was then emerged [and led to the current 
Hawaiian biota on all of the emergent islands] derived its fauna from 
a formerly zippered North America and East Asia, with the Hawaiian 
chain cozily snuggled between the two.

But then one has to explain what happened to that fauna about 50 mya 
when the Pacific was no longer "closed" (a la McCarthy) and the 
geologic evidence shows that there were no emergent islands in the 
Hawaiian chain, the previous ones having been submerged through 
island erosion and subsidence and the Hawaiian chain [and its biota 
now without land, treading water really fast, and pretty much 
freaking out] waiting on the next island to reach the surface.

I've read Heads's article and can't find the answer there.

In the famous words of Ben Stein: "Anybody? Anybody?"

Neal