Biogeography

This map folio should be referenced as:
Scotese, C.R., 2013. Map Folio 70 Early Devonian (Emsian, 402.3 Ma), PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for ArcGIS, volume 4, Late Paleozoic Paleogeographic, Paleoclimatic and Plate Tectonic Reconstructions, PALEOMAP Project, Evanston, IL.

Introduction
These maps (rectilinear projection) are from the PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for ArcGIS (Scotese, 2013a-f).  This is a digital atlas of plate tectonic, paleogeographic, and paleoclimatic reconstructions designed for use with the GIS software, ArcMap (ESRI).  Table 1 lists the various types of maps that comprise the PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas.  The maps included in this folio are highlighted in bold text (Table 1).
The last map in each folio is a rectilinear graticule that can be overlain on the maps to provide a geographic reference frame.  A rectilinear projection was used because it can be easily georeferenced in ArcMap and transformed into a variety of other map projections.  The rectilinear map projection can also be directly “wrapped” onto a spherical projection, like the oneused by Google Earth. A set of Google Earth paleoglobes has made from the maps in this folio. These Google Earth paleoglobes can be downloaded at: www.globalgeology.com. 
If the map you need is missing, or if there doesn’t seem to be a map folio for the exact time interval of interest, please contact me (cscotese@gmail.com). Table 2 lists all the time intervals that comprise the PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas for ArcGIS. The PaleoAtlas contains one map for every stage in the Phanerozoic, as well as 6 maps for the late Precambrian.  Eventually, Map Folios, like this one, will be published for every time interval in the PALEOMAP PaleoAtlas.  The following section is a brief description of the maps that makeup the Map Folio.

Summary1. Calcareous grasslands are communities of high conservation value, often characterized by high plant species richness. These grasslands have experienced a major decline in area throughout Europe, principally resulting from agricultural intensification. Although they have been the focus of extensive previous research, few attempts have been made to examine the long-term dynamics of multiple communities at the landscape scale.2. To assess long-term change in the structure and composition of a calcareous grassland metacommunity, 88 extant sites first surveyed by R. Good in the 1930s were resurveyed in 2009. Values of α-, β- and γ-diversity were compared between the two surveys, using a one-way analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) and non-metric multidimensional scaling. Elements of metacommunity structure (EMS) analysis was used to identify metacommunity structure, and changes in metacommunity composition were related to plant traits.3. Analyses indicated that α-diversity increased...

Among 26 species of Antarctic Cumacea sampled during the southern summer 1989/90 from benthic habitats in the Weddell Sea, four are described as new to science: Campylaspis ledoyeri spec. nov., Hemilamprops bacescui spec. nov., Paralamprops racovitzai spec. nov., and Leptostylis weddelli spec. nov. Detailed descriptions are given for the previously unknown or undescribed sex in seven species: Cyclaspis gigas Zimmer, 1907, Procampylaspis compressa Zimmer, 1907, Paralamprops asper Zimmer, 1907, P. mawsoni (Hale, 1937), Diastylis anderssoni armata Ledoyer, 1993, D. mawsoni Calman, 1918, and Leptostylis antipus Zimmer, 1907. Previous descriptions are supplemented by additional morphological data on 14 species: Cyclaspis gigas, Vaunthompsonia inermis Zimmer, 1909, Eudorella gracilior Zimmer, 1907, Campylaspis excavata Ledoyer, 1993, Procampylaspis compressa, Paralamprops mawsoni, Diastylis anderssoni armata, D. corniculata Hale, 1937, D. enigmatica Ledoyer, 1993, D. helleri Zimmer, 1907, D. mawsoni, Diastylopsis goekei Roccatagliata  Heard, 1992, Leptostylis antipus, and Makrokylindrus inscriptus Jones, 1971.
Egg sizes measured in six species were above or partly in the upper range of previous findings in subpolar to polar climates, while numbers of eggs per female were well within this range. Body sizes measured in nine species were mostly in the upper range. Incubating females were frequent (Diastylopsis goekei), less frequent (Diastylis mawsoni), infrequent (Cyclaspis gigas, Diastylis anderssoni armata, D. corniculata), or absent (Vaunthompsonia inermis, Paralamprops mawsoni, Leptostylis antipus) in the summer samples, thus pointing to the possibility of various breeding strategies in high Antarctic waters.

Rapid, human-induced global change presents major challenges to researchers, policy-makers and land managers. Addressing these challenges requires an appreciation of the dynamics of ecological systems. Here, we propose ‘landscape fluidity’ as a perspective and research agenda from which to consider landscapes in the process of changing rapidly through both time and space. We define landscape fluidity as the ebb and flow of different organisms within a landscape through time. A range of existing ideas, themes and practical approaches are relevant to landscape fluidity, and we use a case study of scattered tree landscapes in south-eastern Australia to illustrate the benefits of a landscape fluidity perspective. We suggest that a focus on landscape fluidity can bring a renewed emphasis on change in landscapes and so help unify a range of currently separate research themes in biogeography, ecology, palaeoecology and conservation biology.

The langurs of the genus Presbytis inhabit tropical rainforests of Sundaland, and with more than 50 color variants grouped in up to eleven species, Presbytis is one of the most diverse Old World monkey genera. The number of taxa and their phylogenetic relationships however remain controversial. To address these issues, we analyzed a 1.8 kb long fragment of the mitochondrial genome, including the cytochrome b gene, the hypervariable region I of the D-loop and the intermediate tRNAs, from individuals representing nine species. Based on our data, we obtained various well-supported terminal clades, which refer mainly to described taxa. Relationships among these clades are not fully resolved, suggesting at least two radiations in the evolutionary history of the genus. According to divergence age estimates, radiations occurred in the late Miocene and the early to middle Pleistocene. Our findings support the revision of the current classification of the genus Presbytis and enable us to discuss implications for conservation. However, further studies including nuclear sequence data are necessary to completely understand the evolutionary history of the genus, and to address possible hybridization events among taxa.

A comprehensive analysis of early dinosaur relationships raised the possibility that the group may have originated in Laurasia (Northern Hemisphere), rather than Gondwana (Southern Hemisphere) as often thought. However, that study focused solely on morphology and phylogenetic relationships and did not quantitatively evaluate this issue. Here, we investigate dinosaur origins using a novel Bayesian framework uniting tip-dated phylogenetics with dynamic, time-sliced biogeographic methods, which explicitly account for the age and locality of fossils and the changing interconnections of areas through time due to tectonic and eustatic change. Our analysis finds strong support for a Gondwanan origin of Dinosauria, with 99 % probability for South America (83 % for southern South America). Parsimony analysis gives concordant results. Inclusion of time-sliced biogeographic information affects ancestral state reconstructions (e.g., high connectivity between two regions increases uncertainty over which is the ancestral area) and influences tree topology (disfavouring uniting fossil taxa from localities that were widely separated during the relevant time slice). Our approach directly integrates plate tectonics with phylogenetics and divergence dating, and in doing so reaffirms southern South America as the most likely area for the geographic origin of Dinosauria. Dinosaurs are one of the most charismatic and heavily studied groups of vertebrates (e.g., Sereno 1999), but despite ongoing work and many recent discoveries, certain aspects of early dinosaurian evolution remain unclear. A recent study of early dinosaur relationships presented a new phylogeny that departs radically from existing models, but forms a broader framework for inferring dinosaur evolutionary history than those that were previously available (Baron et al. 2017a). While that study was focused primarily on early dinosaurian anatomy and relationships, a general observation was made: based upon the geographic locations of key taxa in their phylogeny, a Laurasian setting for dinosaur origin may have been plausible. This proposal ran contrary to an established consensus based on earlier phylogenies that favoured a Gondwanan and, more specifically, South American setting for this event (Nesbitt et al. 2009; Brusatte et al. 2010; Langer et al. 2010; Sues et al. 2011; Boyd 2015). In particular, the European presence of silesaurids, a close outgroup to dinosaurs, and some early dinosaur taxa (e.g., Saltopus) hinted that northern Pangaea may have played an important role in the earliest stages of dinosaur diversification. However, given the space limitations associated with the original article, no quantitative analyses were carried out to evaluate this alternative hypothesis rigorously. Here, we test the alternative hypothesis implicit in Baron et al. (2017a) by analysing their early dinosaur dataset using a novel integration of time-sliced Bayesian biogeographic models (Landis 2016) and tip-dated Bayesian phylogenetics (Drummond et al. 2012; Bielejec et al. 2014; Gavryushkina et al. 2017). The current method simultaneously estimates phylogenetic relationships, divergence dates, evolutionary rates and biogeographic patterns. Biogeographical changes are inferred using models that account for the changing relationships of continents (and thus dispersal abilities) over time-a 'chronobiogeographical' paradigm (Hunn & Upchurch 2001)-and this information provides potentially critical information for improving estimates of tree topology and divergence dates. For comparison, we also perform analogous analyses using traditional biogeographic parsimony-based methods. Previous studies have advocated a similar approach to integrating phylogeny, stratigraphy, morphology and bio-geography in a parsimony framework (reviewed in Rossie & Seiffert 2006). However, that implementation was problematic: as parsimony trees lack an explicit time element, only very simple time-sliced biogeographic models were possible (e.g., three areas and three time slices) and tree topology and divergence dates had to be assessed manually. The analyses attempted here tackle this complex multidimensional problem more efficiently , using explicit Bayesian computational approaches.

As a result of recent collecting efforts and older unpublished data of one of us (AA), 32 ant species (including 2 morphospecies) new to the island of Sicily (Italy) were discovered. Seven of these taxa represent unequivocally exotic entities, whose discovery marks a decisive increase of this component in the local fauna. Among these, two forms of Nylanderia EMERY, 1906 are treated as morphospecies because of the problematic taxonomy of the genus. Six taxa among the discovered species are entirely new to the myrmecofauna of Italy. Finally, Tetramorium indocile SANTSCHI, 1927 is reported for the first time as a host for the social parasite Strongylognathus testaceus (SCHENCK, 1852). The state of the art of the Sicilian myrmecofauna, now counting about 150 species, is commented on.

Aim  There remains some uncertainty concerning the causes of extinctions of Madagascar’s megafauna. One hypothesis is that they were caused by over-hunting by humans. A second hypothesis is that their extinction was caused by both environmental change and hunting. This paper systematically addresses the second hypothesis through examination of two new pollen records from south-eastern Madagascar alongside other published records across the island.Location  South-eastern Madagascar.Methods  We reconstructed past vegetation and fire dynamics over the past 6000 years at two sites in south-eastern Madagascar (Ste-Luce) using fossil pollen and charcoal contained in sedimentary sequences. We investigated drivers of vegetation changes and how these, in turn, influenced faunal species in the south-east, using published climatic, archaeological and faunal records. Further, we also used published records to provide a synthesis of environmental changes on the whole island.Results  Vegetation reconstructions indicate that the mosaic vegetation in the region of Ste-Luce was highly dynamic in response to climatic changes. The open woodland, surrounding the littoral forest, transformed into an ericoid grassland between c. 5800 and 5200 cal. yr bp, possibly in response to a moderate drought recorded during this period. The littoral forest was more stable between c. 5100 and 1000 cal. yr bp, with only some minor compositional changes c. 2800 cal. yr bp and between c. 1900 and 1000 cal. yr bp. Significant forest decline, however, is observed at c. 950 cal. yr bp, coinciding with a drought and a marine surge. A comparison of these results with a synthesis of published vegetation records across the island shows asynchronous vegetation changes in response to various droughts during the Holocene, except for the 950 cal. yr bp drought event, with evidence of widespread vegetation transformations and fires across the island.Main conclusions  Pronounced climatic desiccation between 1200 and 700 cal. yr bp may have been the slow driver framing and triggering vegetation transformations and decline in megafaunal populations. In addition, hunting by drought-impacted human inhabitants and competition with newly introduced cattle would have amplified the impacts on megafaunal populations, leading to numerous extinctions in this period.

Historical analysis of botanical literature concerning the trees Gilletiodendron glandulosum and Guibourtia copallifera in Mali’s Manding Plateau reveals that the dominant representation of these plants has helped to perpetuate colonial-era theories of vegetation history, African land management, and natural resource politics in West Africa. The French botanist Aubréville described these plants as proof of the theory of vegetation history that blamed poor land management by rural Africans for a steady and continuing destruction of vegetation from its presumed original forest climax. Although Aubréville’s representation of these trees was justified within the 1930s scientific context he worked, subsequent researchers uncritically maintained his conclusions even though the changed scientific context in which they worked did not justify such representation. Subsequent ecological research also failed to substantiate Aubréville’s representation of these trees, yet several influential modern botanical works have uncritically accepted colonial-era botanical literature founded on his ideas. Thus, modern botanical works have perpetuated a simplistic and inaccurate narrative of resource use under an appearance of objectivity. As a result, policy recommendations based on the modern botanical sources remain almost identical to colonial-era policies. Based on the similarity of colonial-era and modern portrayals of these trees, this paper argues that a regional discursive formation recently described by other authors may be expanded to include southern Mali, which carries negative implications for decentralization reform in Mali.

Based on biogeography and phylogeny of the Neotropical genus Morpho, and a synthesis of present knowledge on the geodynamics and paleogeography of South America, evolutionary scenarios are proposed to understand the diversification of the genus through time and space.They emphasize the driving role of Andean uplift and subsequent transformations of Amazonia.