[Taxacom] Geophylogeny

[Karl Magnacca]

> Aaiiiieeee! Getting close to hair-splitting here, and maybe an
> expert biogeographer on the list would like to comment. The
> historical phylogeography I've read has mainly focused on testing
> specific hypotheses, e.g. that a particular area was a refuge or a
> hotspot of diversification. What Kidd wants to do is literally map a
> phylogeny, so that the whole construct is an hypothesis which could
> be tested with fossils or geological narratives.

Is this really new?  I suppose you could argue that in a statistical
sense "most" historical biogeography is as you describe, but the
latter has been done for a long time as well.  The program DiVA, for
example, is made to map the geographic distribution of hypothetical
ancestors of a phylogenetic tree using a parsimony algorithm.

Karl
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Karl Magnacca
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Hawaii-Hilo