Author: Lucie Bauret (Anaïs)Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Madagascar is a continental island in the Indian Ocean, near African coasts. It is also a biodiversity hotspot, comprising more than 12,000 species of vascular plants and including more than 600 fern species with an endemism reaching the 45%. Comparatively, continental Africa comprises only 800 species. How can such a diversity be explained in Madagascar? What are the biogeographical origins of the Malagasy ferns? Thanks to new data combined to the literature, hypotheses on the biogeographical history of Malagasy ferns are here proposed.Four fern taxa were newly investigated: grammitid and blechnoid subfamilies, Rumohra and Lindsaea-Odontosoria, as well as Phlegmariurus, a genus of lycophytes considered as a phylogenetic replicate in another vascular spore-bearing plant lineage. The biogeographical history of the Malagasy lineages was inferred, based on worldwide molecular phylogenies completed by Malagasy species, molecular dating and ancestral area estimates.Despite its Gondwanian origin, ferns and lycophytes would have colonized Madagascar after its isolation, during the Cenozoic (
