Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of genetics, particularly population genetics. [1]
This term was introduced to describe geographically structured genetic signals within and among species. An explicit focus on a species' biogeography/biogeographical past sets phylogeography apart from classical population genetics and phylogenetics. [2]
Past events that can be inferred include population expansion, population bottlenecks, vicariance, dispersal, and migration. Recently developed approaches integrating coalescent theory or the genealogical history of alleles and distributional information can more accurately address the relative roles of these different historical forces in shaping current patterns. [3]
The term phylogeography was first used by John Avise in his 1987 work Intraspecific Phylogeography: The Mitochondrial DNA Bridge Between Population Genetics and Systematics. [4] Historical biogeography is a synthetic discipline that addresses how historical, geological, climatic and ecological conditions influenced the past and current distribution of species. As part of historical biogeography, researchers had been evaluating the geographical and evolutionary relationships of organisms years before. Two developments during the 1960s and 1970s were particularly important in laying the groundwork for modern phylogeography; the first was the spread of cladistic thought, and the second was the development of plate tectonics theory. [5]
The resulting school of thought was vicariance biogeography, which explained the origin of new lineages through geological events like the drifting apart of continents or the formation of rivers. When a continuous population (or species) is divided by a new river or a new mountain range (i.e., a vicariance event), two populations (or species) are created. Paleogeography, geology and paleoecology are all important fields that supply information that is integrated into phylogeographic analyses.
Phylogeography takes a population genetics and phylogenetic perspective on biogeography. In the mid-1970s, population genetic analyses turned to mitochondrial markers. [6] The advent of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the process where millions of copies of a DNA segment can be replicated, was crucial in the development of phylogeography.
Thanks to this breakthrough, the information contained in mitochondrial DNA sequences was much more accessible. Advances in both laboratory methods (e.g. capillary DNA sequencing technology) that allowed easier sequencing of DNA and computational methods that make better use of the data (e.g. employing coalescent theory) have helped improve phylogeographic inference. [6] By 2000, Avise generated a seminal review of the topic in book form, in which he defined phylogeography as the study of the "principles and processes governing the geographic distributions of genealogical lineages... within and among closely related species." [1]
Early phylogeographic work has recently been criticized for its narrative nature and lack of statistical rigor (i.e. it did not statistically test alternative hypotheses). The only real method was Alan Templeton's Nested Clade Analysis, which made use of an inference key to determine the validity of a given process in explaining the concordance between geographic distance and genetic relatedness. Recent approaches have taken a stronger statistical approach to phylogeography than was done initially. [2] [7] [8]
Example
Climate change, such as the glaciation cycles of the past 2.4 million years, has periodically restricted some species into disjunct refugia. These restricted ranges may result in population bottlenecks that reduce genetic variation. Once a reversal in climate change allows for rapid migration out of refugial areas, these species spread rapidly into newly available habitat. A number of empirical studies find genetic signatures of both animal and plant species that support this scenario of refugia and postglacial expansion. [3] This has occurred both in the tropics (where the main effect of glaciation is increasing aridity, i.e. the expansion of savanna and retraction of tropical rainforest) [9] [10] as well as temperate regions that were directly influenced by glaciers. [11]
Phylogeography can help in the prioritization of areas of high value for conservation. Phylogeographic analyses have also played an important role in defining evolutionary significant units (ESU), a unit of conservation below the species level that is often defined on unique geographic distribution and mitochondrial genetic patterns. [12]
A recent study on imperiled cave crayfish in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America [13] demonstrates how phylogenetic analyses along with geographic distribution can aid in recognizing conservation priorities. Using phylogeographical approaches, the authors found that hidden within what was thought to be a single, widely distributed species, an ancient and previously undetected species was also present. Conservation decisions can now be made to ensure that both lineages received protection. Results like this are not an uncommon outcome from phylogeographic studies.
An analysis of salamanders of the genus Eurycea , also in the Appalachians, found that the current taxonomy of the group greatly underestimated species level diversity. [14] The authors of this study also found that patterns of phylogeographic diversity were more associated with historical (rather than modern) drainage connections, indicating that major shifts in the drainage patterns of the region played an important role in the generation of diversity of these salamanders. A thorough understanding of phylogeographic structure will thus allow informed choices in prioritizing areas for conservation.
The field of comparative phylogeography seeks to explain the mechanisms responsible for the phylogenetic relationships and distribution of different species. For example, comparisons across multiple taxa can clarify the histories of biogeographical regions. [15] For example, phylogeographic analyses of terrestrial vertebrates on the Baja California peninsula [16] and marine fish on both the Pacific and gulf sides of the peninsula [15] display genetic signatures that suggest a vicariance event affected multiple taxa during the Pleistocene or Pliocene.
Phylogeography also gives an important historical perspective on community composition. History is relevant to regional and local diversity in two ways. [9] One, the size and makeup of the regional species pool results from the balance of speciation and extinction. Two, at a local level community composition is influenced by the interaction between local extinction of species’ populations and recolonization. [9] A comparative phylogenetic approach in the Australian Wet Tropics indicates that regional patterns of species distribution and diversity are largely determined by local extinctions and subsequent recolonizations corresponding to climatic cycles.
Phylogeography integrates biogeography and genetics to study in greater detail the lineal history of a species in context of the geoclimatic history of the planet. An example study of poison frogs living in the South American neotropics (illustrated to the left) is used to demonstrate how phylogeographers combine genetics and paleogeography to piece together the ecological history of organisms in their environments. Several major geoclimatic events have greatly influenced the biogeographic distribution of organisms in this area, including the isolation and reconnection of South America, the uplift of the Andes, an extensive Amazonian floodbasin system during the Miocene, the formation of Orinoco and Amazon drainages, and dry−wet climate cycles throughout the Pliocene to Pleistocene epochs. [17]
Using this contextual paleogeographic information (paleogeographic time series is shown in panels A-D) the authors of this study [17] proposed a null-hypothesis that assumes no spatial structure and two alternative hypothesis involving dispersal and other biogeographic constraints (hypothesis are shown in panels E-G, listed as SMO, SM1, and SM2). The phylogeographers visited the ranges of each frog species to obtain tissue samples for genetic analysis; researchers can also obtain tissue samples from museum collections.
The evolutionary history and relations among different poison frog species is reconstructed using phylogenetic trees derived from molecular data. The molecular trees are mapped in relation to paleogeographic history of the region for a complete phylogeographic study. The tree shown in the center of the figure has its branch lengths calibrated to a molecular clock, with the geological time bar shown at the bottom. The same phylogenetic tree is duplicated four more times to show where each lineage is distributed and is found (illustrated in the inset maps below, including Amazon basin, Andes, Guiana-Venezuela, Central America-Chocó). [17]
The combination of techniques used in this study exemplifies more generally how phylogeographic studies proceed and test for patterns of common influence. Paleogeographic data establishes geological time records for historical events that explain the branching patterns in the molecular trees. This study rejected the null model and found that the origin for all extant Amazonian poison frog species primarily stem from fourteen lineages that dispersed into their respective areas after the Miocene floodbasin receded. [17] Regionally based phylogeographic studies of this type are repeated for different species as a means of independent testing. Phylogeographers find broadly concordant and repeated patterns among species in most regions of the planet that is due to a common influence of paleoclimatic history. [1]
Phylogeography has also proven to be useful in understanding the origin and dispersal patterns of our own species, Homo sapiens . Based primarily on observations of skeletal remains of ancient human remains and estimations of their age, anthropologists proposed two competing hypotheses about human origins.
The first hypothesis is referred to as the Out-of-Africa with replacement model, which contends that the last expansion out of Africa around 100,000 years ago resulted in the modern humans displacing all previous Homo spp. populations in Eurasia that were the result of an earlier wave of emigration out of Africa. The multiregional scenario claims that individuals from the recent expansion out of Africa intermingled genetically with those human populations of more ancient African emigrations. A phylogeographic study that uncovered a Mitochondrial Eve that lived in Africa 150,000 years ago provided early support for the Out-of-Africa model. [18]
While this study had its shortcomings, it received significant attention both within scientific circles and a wider audience. A more thorough phylogeographic analysis that used ten different genes instead of a single mitochondrial marker indicates that at least two major expansions out of Africa after the initial range extension of Homo erectus played an important role shaping the modern human gene pool and that recurrent genetic exchange is pervasive. [19] These findings strongly demonstrated Africa's central role in the evolution of modern humans, but also indicated that the multiregional model had some validity. These studies have largely been supplanted by population genomic studies that use orders of magnitude more data.
In light of these recent data from the 1000 genomes project, genomic-scale SNP databases sampling thousands of individuals globally and samples taken from two non-Homo sapiens hominins (Neanderthals and Denisovans), the picture of human evolutionary has become more resolved and complex involving possible Neanderthal and Denisovan admixture, admixture with archaic African hominins, and Eurasian expansion into the Australasian region that predates the standard out of African expansion.
Viruses are informative in understanding the dynamics of evolutionary change due to their rapid mutation rate and fast generation time. [20] Phylogeography is a useful tool in understanding the origins and distributions of different viral strains. A phylogeographic approach has been taken for many diseases that threaten human health, including dengue fever, rabies, influenza and HIV. [20] Similarly, a phylogeographic approach will likely play a key role in understanding the vectors and spread of avian influenza (HPAI H5N1), demonstrating the relevance of phylogeography to the general public.
Phylogeographic analysis of ancient and modern languages has been used to test whether Indo-European languages originated in Anatolia or in the steppes of Central Asia. [21] Language evolution was modeled in terms of the gain and loss of cognate words in each language over time, to produce a cladogram of related languages. Combining those data with known geographic ranges of each language produced strong support for an Anatolian origin approximately 8000–9500 years ago.
Panthera is a genus within the family Felidae, and one of two extant genera in the subfamily Pantherinae. It contains the largest living members of the cat family. There are five living species: the jaguar, leopard, lion, snow leopard and tiger, as well as a number of extinct species, including the cave lion and American lion.
Allopatric speciation – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from each other to an extent that prevents or interferes with gene flow.
Zelkova is a genus of six species of deciduous trees in the elm family Ulmaceae, native to southern Europe, and southwest and eastern Asia. They vary in size from shrubs to large trees up to 35 m (115 ft) tall. The bark is smooth, dark brown. Unlike the elms, the branchlets are never corky or winged. The leaves are alternate, with serrated margins, and a symmetrical base to the leaf blade. The leaves are in two distinct rows; they have pinnate venation and each vein extends to the leaf margin, where it terminates in a tooth. There are two stipules at each node, though these are caducous, leaving a pair of scars at the leaf base. Zelkova is polygamous. Staminate flowers are clustered in the lower leaf axils of young branchlets; the perianth is campanulate, with four to six lobes, and the stamens are short. Pistillate and hermaphrodite flowers are solitary, or rarely in clusters of two to four, in the upper leaf axils of young branchlets. The fruit is a dry, nut-like drupe with a dorsal keel, produced singly in the leaf axils. The perianth and stigma are persistent.
Peripatric speciation is a mode of speciation in which a new species is formed from an isolated peripheral population. Since peripatric speciation resembles allopatric speciation, in that populations are isolated and prevented from exchanging genes, it can often be difficult to distinguish between them., and peripatric speciation may be considered one type or model of allopatric speciation. The primary distinguishing characteristic of peripatric speciation is that one of the populations is much smaller than the other, as opposed to allopatric speciation, in which similarly-sized populations become separated. The terms peripatric and peripatry are often used in biogeography, referring to organisms whose ranges are closely adjacent but do not overlap, being separated where these organisms do not occur—for example on an oceanic island compared to the mainland. Such organisms are usually closely related ; their distribution being the result of peripatric speciation.
Molecular ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that is concerned with applying molecular genetic techniques to ecological questions. It is virtually synonymous with the field of "Ecological Genetics" as pioneered by Theodosius Dobzhansky, E. B. Ford, Godfrey M. Hewitt, and others. Molecular ecology is related to the fields of population genetics and conservation genetics.
Forensic identification is the application of forensic science, or "forensics", and technology to identify specific objects from the trace evidence they leave, often at a crime scene or the scene of an accident. Forensic means "for the courts".
In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each other, further blurring any distinctions. Terms that are sometimes used synonymously but have more precise meanings are cryptic species for two or more species hidden under one species name, sibling species for two species that are each other's closest relative, and species flock for a group of closely related species that live in the same habitat. As informal taxonomic ranks, species group, species aggregate, macrospecies, and superspecies are also in use.
Hippocampus angustus, commonly known as the narrow-bellied seahorse, western Australian seahorse, or western spiny seahorse, is a species of marine fish of the family Syngnathidae. It is found in waters off of Australia, from Perth to Hervey Bay, and the southern portion of Papua New Guinea in the Torres Strait. It lives over soft-bottom substrates, adjacent to coral reefs, and on soft corals at depths of 3–63 metres (9.8–206.7 ft). It is expected to feed on small crustaceans, similar to other seahorses. This species is ovoviviparous, with males carrying eggs in a brood pouch before giving birth to live young. This type of seahorse is monogamous in its mating patterns. The males only fertilize one female's eggs for the mating season because of the population distribution. While some seahorses can be polygamous because they are denser in population, this type of seahorse is more sparsely distributed and the cost of reproduction is high. Therefore, the risk to reproduce due to predatory and distributary factors limits this breed to one mate, often finding the same mate season after season.
The American red fox is a North American subspecies of the red fox. It is the largest of the true foxes and one of the most widely distributed members of the order Carnivora, occurring in North America. This subspecies is most likely the ancestor of the domesticated silver fox.
A genetic isolate is a population of organisms that has little to no genetic mixing with other organisms of the same species due to geographic isolation or other factors that prevent reproduction. Genetic isolates form new species through an evolutionary process known as speciation. All modern species diversity is a product of genetic isolates and evolution.
Genetic monitoring is the use of molecular markers to (i) identify individuals, species or populations, or (ii) to quantify changes in population genetic metrics over time. Genetic monitoring can thus be used to detect changes in species abundance and/or diversity, and has become an important tool in both conservation and livestock management. The types of molecular markers used to monitor populations are most commonly mitochondrial, microsatellites or single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), while earlier studies also used allozyme data. Species gene diversity is also recognized as an important biodiversity metric for implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
John Charles Avise is an American evolutionary geneticist, conservationist, natural historian, and prolific science author. He is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolution, University of California, Irvine, and was previously a Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of Georgia.
The British Columbia wolf is a subspecies of gray wolf which lives in a narrow region that includes those parts of the mainland coast and near-shore islands that are covered with temperate rain-forest, which extends from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, to the Alexander Archipelago in south-east Alaska. This area is bounded by the Coast Mountains.
Deinacrida connectens, often referred to as the alpine scree wētā, is one of New Zealand's largest alpine invertebrates and is a member of the Anostostomatidae family. Deinacrida connectens is a flightless nocturnal insect that lives under rocks at high elevation. Mountain populations vary in colour. This species is the most widespread of the eleven species of giant wētā (Deinacrida).
Leslie Jane Rissler is an American biologist best known for her work on amphibian and reptile biogeography, evolutionary ecology, systematics, and conservation, and for her strong advocacy of improving the public’s understanding and appreciation of evolution. She is currently Program Officer in the Evolutionary Processes Cluster of the Division of Environmental Biology and Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation.
Chelonoidis niger donfaustoi, known as the eastern Santa Cruz tortoise, is a subspecies of Galápagos tortoise living on Santa Cruz Island, within the Galápagos. Until 2015, C. n. donfaustoi was considered conspecific with the western Santa Cruz tortoise, C. n. porteri.
Carol Ann Stepien is an American ecologist at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016.
Landscape genetics is the scientific discipline that combines population genetics and landscape ecology. It broadly encompasses any study that analyses plant or animal population genetic data in conjunction with data on the landscape features and matrix quality where the sampled population lives. This allows for the analysis of microevolutionary processes affecting the species in light of landscape spatial patterns, providing a more realistic view of how populations interact with their environments. Landscape genetics attempts to determine which landscape features are barriers to dispersal and gene flow, how human-induced landscape changes affect the evolution of populations, the source-sink dynamics of a given population, and how diseases or invasive species spread across landscapes.
Libby Liggins is an evolutionary ecologist and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Natural and Computational Science at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand, as well as a research associate at Auckland Museum. Her research uses genetic and genomic data to explore the biogeography, population ecology, and biodiversity of marine organisms.
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