INVESTIGADORES
CATALANO Santiago Andres
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Diversification history of Prosopis is America
Autor/es:
CATALANO, SA; SAIDMAN, BO; VILARDI, JC
Lugar:
Buenos Aires
Reunión:
Conferencia; V International Leguminosae Conference; 2010
Resumen:
The genus Prosopis is an important member of arid and semiarid environments around the world. Several hypotheses have been advanced related to the diversification of Prosopis in arid environments. Here we present an integrative approach to asses this issue that includes several sources of evidence: molecular dating, diversification rate analysis, optimization of characters that describe the environment, evaluation of Prosopis fossil record and the analysis of paleoclimatic data. We found a correlation between the development of arid areas in America and the frame time of Prosopis diversification. In addition, the diversification rate with for the genus increased concomitantly with the spreading of arid and semiarid environments in America. The optimization of environmental variables indicated that the occupation of arid environments by Prosopis would be ancient, probably before the splitting of the main lineages within the genus. Fossil record indicates that Prosopis species were occupying arid or semiarid environments at least since the late Miocene. Although the evidence is in general agreement with an ancient occupation arid environments by Prosopis, and with a diversification of the genus triggered by the spreading of arid environments, the available data is not enough to discard other sceneries for Prosopis diversification.