Southeast Asia’s changing palaeogeography

By R. Hall. 2009

398 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Geology provides the basis for understanding distributions of faunas and floras in Southeast Asia but only via a complex interplay of plate movements, palaeogeography, ocean circulation and climate. Southeast Asia grew incrementally by the addition of continental fragments, mainly rifted from Australia, and added to the margins of Sundaland as a result of subduction. Sundaland was an almost permanent land area from the beginning of the Mesozoic. The addition of the continental fragments of Southwest Borneo and later East Java–West Sulawesi formed a much larger emergent land area by the Late Cretaceous that extended from Indochina to West Sulawesi. Subduction resumed at the Sundaland margin in the Eocene and this led to widespread rifting within Sundaland, and formed one of the most important barriers at its edge, the Makassar Straits. Australia began to collide with Southeast Asia about 25 million years ago, effectively closing the former deep ocean separating the two continents, and forming the region now known as Wallacea. Collision, volcanism, and subduction-related processes have led to rise of mountains but also formed new oceans within this complex region. Plate tectonic movements and collisions were intimately linked to changing topography, bathymetry and land/sea distributions which have in turn influenced oceanic circulation and climate. As the deep-water barrier between Australia and Southeast Asia was eliminated and mountains rose, deep marine basins also formed. Eustatic changes in sea level further contributed to a complex palaeogeography. The present gateway between the Pacific and Indian Oceans is the only low latitude oceanic passage between the world’s oceans, and is an important influence on local and probably global climate. The gateway is likely to have been just as significant in the past. Understanding the geology, then palaeogeography, and then their oceanic and climatic consequences are vital steps on the way to interpreting present distributions of plants and animals.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Earth-Surface Processes, Geology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/92fb5af80fd4c67ae0574557eb74901e6a48fa5f

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Citations in the corpus

Consistent patterns of elevational change in tree taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity across Malesian mountain forests (2013, background): “…in both taxonomic and phylogenetic tree community composition seem to indicate a basically uniform evolutionary history of the tree flora of Malesian mountain forests with the major characteristic clades apparently having evolved before the formation of the Southeast Asian archipelago (Hall, 2009).”
Global biogeography and diversification of palms sheds light on the evolution of tropical lineages. II. Diversification history and origin of regional assemblages (2013, background): “Africa contains just 65 species of palms, more than tenfold fewer than South America or Southeast Asia (Dransfield et al., 2008).”
The Sahul–Sunda floristic exchange: dated molecular phylogenies document Cenozoic intercontinental dispersal dynamics (2015, background): “Furthermore, a consequence of the Sahul–Sunda collision in the mid-Miocene was the emergence of much of the extant land east of Wallace’s Line (Hall, 1995; Morley, 1998), most notably an elongated New Guinea landmass that subsequently underwent substantial orogeny, resulting in the rise of the Centr”
Odd man out: why are there fewer plant species in African rain forests? (2014, background): “In South-East Asia, the collision of the two continental plates (Sundaland and Australia) at the beginning of the Miocene (Hall 2009) brought into contact two different floras increasing species richness in the region (see below, Lovett et al. 2007; see Richardson et al. 2012 for review).”
Impacts of climate change on the amphibians and reptiles of Southeast Asia (2010, background): “rapidly changing elevations and habitats (Whitten et al. 2002; Hall 2009).”
Orchid historical biogeography, diversification, Antarctica and the paradox of orchid dispersal (2016, background): “Western Sulawesi rafted from Borneo in the middle Eocene; eastern Sulawesi, the Moluccas, the lesser Sunda islands and New Guinea resulted from collision of the Australian, Eurasian and Pacific plates 25 Ma (Pigram & Davies, 1987; Hall, 2009).”
Assembly and division of the South and South-East Asian flora in relation to tectonics and climate change (2018, background): “Therefore, to understand the processes involved in the assembly of high diversity in South-East Asia requires knowledge of the tectonic and climatic histories of the region (de Bruyn et al. 2014, Hall 2002, 2009; Morley 2000), and patterns of diversification within individual clades.”
Biogeography of the Indo-Australian Archipelago (2011, background): “Few studies dating the divergence time of Sulawesi taxa claim an origin of these by vicariance from the west, which is temporally constrained by the opening of Makassar Strait approximately 45 Mya in the Eocene (Hall 2009).”
Global biogeography and diversification of palms sheds light on the evolution of tropical lineages. I. Historical biogeography (2013, background): “Our results support previous hypotheses that the Caryoteae migrated eastwards across Wallace’s Line during the Miocene evolution of Malesia (Dransfield, 1987; Hahn & Sytsma, 1999; Dransfield et al., 2008; Baker & Couvreur, 2012) as well as dispersing into India.”
‘Out‐of‐Africa’ dispersal of tropical floras during the Miocene climatic optimum: evidence from Uvaria (Annonaceae) (2012, background): “…from the Late Miocene onwards offered the best opportunities for dispersal to and across eastern Malesia as substantial land emerged in Sulawesi and New Guinea, and the emergence of volcanic islands along the Sunda and Banda Arcs offered avenues for dispersal by island hopping (Hall, 2001, 2009).”
West to east dispersal and subsequent rapid diversification of the mega‐diverse genus Begonia (Begoniaceae) in the Malesian archipelago (2012, background): “The orogenesis of the Central Range in New Guinea was initiated in the late Miocene, but most of the mountain uplift probably occurred since 5 Ma (Hall, 2009).”
Vicariance or long‐distance dispersal: historical biogeography of the pantropical subfamily Chrysophylloideae (Sapotaceae) (2011, background): “37 Ma (McLoughlin, 2001; Pelletier, 2006; Schellart, 2007; Grandcolas et al., 2008; Hall, 2009).”
Phylogenetic Methods in Biogeography (2011, background): “Increasingly accurate and detailed paleogeographic maps (e.g., Hall 2009, Rosenbaum et al. 2002) are now becoming available.”