28 research outputs found
Species-range size distributions: products of speciation, extinction and transformation
One basic summary of the spatial pattern of biodiversity across the surface of the Earth is provided by a species-range size distribution, the frequency distribution of the numbers of species exhibiting geographic ranges of different sizes. Although widely considered to be approximately lognormal, increasingly it appears that across a variety of groups of organisms this distribution systematically departs from such a form. Whatever its detailed shape, however, the distribution must arise as a product of three processes, speciation, extinction and transformation (the temporal dynamics of the range sizes of species during their life times). Considering the role potentially played by each of these processes necessitates drawing on information from a diverse array of research fields, and highlights the possible role of geographic range size as a common currency uniting them
Phylogenomic analysis of Calyptratae: resolving the phylogenetic relationships within a major radiation of Diptera
The Calyptratae, one of the most speciesârich fly clades, only originated and diversified after the CretaceousâPalaeogene extinction event and yet exhibit high species diversity and a diverse array of life history strategies including predation, phytophagy, saprophagy, haematophagy and parasitism. We present the first phylogenomic analysis of calyptrate relationships. The analysis is based on 40 species representing all calyptrate families and on nucleotide and amino acid data for 1456 singleâcopy proteinâcoding genes obtained from shotgun sequencing of transcriptomes. Topologies are overall well resolved, robust and largely congruent across trees obtained with different approaches (maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, coalescentâbased species tree, fourâcluster likelihood mapping). Many nodes have 100% bootstrap and jackknife support, but the true support varies by more than one order of magnitude [Bremer support from 3 to 3427; random addition concatenation analysis (RADICAL) gene concatenation size from 10 to 1456]. Analyses of a Dayhoffâ6 recoded amino acid dataset also support the robustness of many clades. The backbone topology Hippoboscoidea+(Fanniidae+(Muscidae+((AnthomyiidaeâScathophagidae)+Oestroidea))) is strongly supported and most families are monophyletic (exceptions: Anthomyiidae and Calliphoridae). The monotypic Ulurumyiidae is either alone or together with Mesembrinellidae as the sister group to the rest of Oestroidea. The Sarcophagidae are sister to Mystacinobiidae+Oestridae. Polleniinae emerge as sister group to Tachinidae and the monophyly of the clade Calliphorinae+Luciliinae is well supported, but the phylogenomic data cannot confidently place the remaining blowfly subfamilies (Helicoboscinae, Ameniinae, Chrysomyinae). Compared to hypotheses from the Sanger sequencing era, many clades within the muscoid grade are congruent but now have much higher support. Within much of Oestroidea, Sanger era and phylogenomic data struggle equally with regard to finding wellâsupported hypotheses