Molecular Panbiogeography of the Tropics

About this book

Molecular studies reveal highly ordered geographic patterns in plant and animal distributions. The tropics illustrate these patterns of community immobilism leading allopatric differentiation, as well as other patterns of mobilism, range expansion, and overlap of taxa. Integrating Earth history and biogeography, "Molecular Panbiogeography of the Tropics" is an alternative view of distributional history in which groups are older than suggested by fossils and fossil-calibrated molecular clocks. The author discusses possible causes for the endemism of high-level taxa in tropical America and Madagascar, and overlapping clades in South America, Africa, and Asia. The book concludes with a critique of adaptation by selection, founded on biogeography and recent work in genetics.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Evolution in Space
Chapter 2. Evolution in Time
Chapter 3. Evolution and Biogeography of Primates: A New Model Based on Molecular Phylogenetics, Vicariance and Plate Tectonics
Chapter 4. Biogeography of New World Monkeys
Chapter 5. Primates in Africa and Asia
Chapter 6. Biogeography of the Central Pacific: Endemism, Vicariance and Plate Tectonics
Chapter 7. Biogeography of the Hawaiian Islands: The Global Context
Chapter 8. Distribution Within the Hawaiian Islands
Chapter 9. Biogeography of Pantropical and Global Groups
Chapter 10. Evolution in Space, Time, and Form: Beyond Centers of Origin, Dispersal, and Adaptation

Glossary
Bibliography

Customer Reviews

Biography

Michael Heads is a former Senior Lecturer in Ecology at the University of the South Pacific. He is now an independent scholar living in New Zealand.