[Taxacom] metapopulations in biogeography and ecology

[Richard Zander]

Seems to me that trying to order taxa at the base of a phylogenetic tree of botanical life is fraught with problems having to do with increasing degrees of freedom. 

Amborella and other taxa at the base are extant remnants of a vast array of extinct morphotypes. Rather than sister group analysis, one might try ordering by expressed traits. I'll bet that there will be vast gaps caused by extinct links. A cladogram always has a continuous series of lines between all terminal taxa, so it appears that relationships are somehow nearly, almost, just about settled. Fake clues!


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Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden – 4344 Shaw Blvd. – St. Louis – Missouri – 63110 – USA
richard.zander at mobot.org Ofc: +1 314 577-0276
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of John Grehan
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2018 8:07 PM
To: taxacom
Subject: [Taxacom] metapopulations in biogeography and ecology

If one has not read the papers directly it is possible that one could get the impression that the metapopulation model for biogeography is confined to panbiogeography. But in the New Caledonia paper Heads points out some examples of its acceptance in various biogeographic studies. For example, the distribution of a clade of empidid flies on New Zealand, Lord Howe Island, and New Caledonia (all on continental crust that rifted from Gondwana in the late Cretaceous) and Vanuatu (part of the island arc that rifted from Gondwana in the late Cretaceous) are is explained by Plant
(2011) as a “a relictual Gondwanan element that has survived Oligocene drowning as metapopulations persisting *in situ *on ephemeral islands along arcs, ridges and buoyant crustal blocks...” Similarly, Beaver & Liu (2016) believe that New Caledonian elements of ambrosia beetles “ *. . . *may have survived as metapopulations on ephemeral islands over tens of millions of years *. . *.”.  And Pearlson & Pavliček (2017) rejected long-distance dispersal (and speciation) in favor of short-distance dispersal allows long-term survival as metapopulations for earthworms.


So there are examples out there of biogeographic approaches that apply panbiogeographic concepts and principles, or generate approaches that are compatible with or supported by panbiogeographic approaches. Metapopulation may well represent a bridging concept that is equally applicable in biogeography as it is in ecology. Which is to be expected since the two domains work in concert (since earth and life evolve together), and metapopulation models do not generate a whole lot of (sometimes
explicit) mysteries,
anomalies, contradictions etc.


John Grehan

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