A tale of worldwide success: Behind the scenes of Carex (Cyperaceae) biogeography and diversification

By S. Martín‐Bravo, P. Jiménez‐Mejías, T. Villaverde, M. Escudero, Marlene Hahn, Daniel Spalink, Eric H. Roalson, Andrew L. Hipp, Carmen Benítez‐Benítez, Leo P. Bruederle and 17 more. Journal of Systematics and Evolution, 2019

100 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The megadiverse genus Carex (c. 2000 species, Cyperaceae) has a nearly cosmopolitan distribution, displaying an inverted latitudinal richness gradient with higher species diversity in cold‐temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Despite great expansion in our knowledge of the phylogenetic history of the genus and many molecular studies focusing on the biogeography of particular groups during the last few decades, a global analysis of Carex biogeography and diversification is still lacking. For this purpose, we built the hitherto most comprehensive Carex‐dated phylogeny based on three markers (ETS–ITS–matK), using a previous phylogenomic Hyb‐Seq framework, and a sampling of two‐thirds of its species and all recognized sections. Ancestral area reconstruction, biogeographic stochastic mapping, and diversification rate analyses were conducted to elucidate macroevolutionary biogeographic and diversification patterns. Our results reveal that Carex originated in the late Eocene in E Asia, where it probably remained until the synchronous diversification of its main subgeneric lineages during the late Oligocene. E Asia is supported as the cradle of Carex diversification, as well as a “museum” of extant species diversity. Subsequent “out‐of‐Asia” colonization patterns feature multiple asymmetric dispersals clustered toward present times among the Northern Hemisphere regions, with major regions acting both as source and sink (especially Asia and North America), as well as several independent colonization events of the Southern Hemisphere. We detected 13 notable diversification rate shifts during the last 10 My, including remarkable radiations in North America and New Zealand, which occurred concurrently with the late Neogene global cooling, which suggests that diversification involved the colonization of new areas and expansion into novel areas of niche space.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ff6b3fa74276b627521c1fe633e1c7a30176f96f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. Z. Nie
2. Andrew L. Hipp
3. Julian R. Starr
4. Jun Wen
5. Tomomi Masaki
6. M. J. Waterway
7. Eric H. Roalson

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. Jun Wen
2. Z. Nie
3. Tomomi Masaki
4. Daniel Spalink
5. M. J. Waterway

In Plant Science

1. Z. Nie
2. Andrew L. Hipp
3. Jun Wen
4. Eric H. Roalson
5. V. Funk

Citations in the corpus

• Major clades and a revised classification of Magnolia and Magnoliaceae based on whole plastid genome sequences via genome skimming (2020, background): “Splendentes, test species delimitations, and explore the global biogeographic diversification of Magnoliaceae with both temporal and tropical elements (Chin et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2018; Jiang et al., 2019; Martín‐Bravo et al., 2019).”
• A framework infrageneric classification of Carex (Cyperaceae) and its organizing principles (2020, methodology): “This large clade is consistently found across phylogenetic studies (e.g., Waterway & Starr, 2007; Waterway et al., 2009; Jiménez‐Mejías et al., 2016a; Martín‐Bravo et al., 2019), and hence is recognized as a clade here.”