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Age and origin of enigmatic megaherbs from the subantarctic islands
Correspondence: (Login to view email address)
- Allan Herbarium, Landcare Research, Systematics, New Zealand
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Australia
- Department of Systems Sciences, University of Tokyo
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- Document Type:
- Manuscript
- Date:
- Received 28 October 2007 20:54 UTC; Posted 29 October 2007
- Subjects:
- Evolutionary Biology and Ecology
- Abstract:
Biogeographic relationships in the southern hemisphere have puzzled biologists for the last two centuries. Once joined to form the supercontinent Gondwana, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and South America are widely separated by the Pacific and Indian oceans. Sir Joseph Hooker was the first to suggest that Antarctica served as a corridor for plant migration not unlike the land-bridges in the northern hemisphere. While the Antarctic flora was largely erased by glaciation during the Pleistocene, at least some of these Antarctic plant communities found refuge on the subantarctic islands. Here we provide support for the hypothesis that giant herbs persisted in the subantactic islands prior to the onset of Pleistocene glaciation, then dispersed northward in response to glacial advance. Our findings provide further evidence that Antarctica has played a pivotal role in shaping southern hemisphere biogeography.
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- This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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Wagstaff, Steven J., Breitwieser, Ilse, Quinn, Christopher, and Ito, Motomi. Age and origin of enigmatic megaherbs from the subantarctic islands. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2007.1272.1> (2007)
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