New Explanation for the Origin of High Species Diversity
ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2010) — An international team of scientists, including a leading evolutionary biologist from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, have reset the agenda for future research in the highly diverse Amazon region by showing that the extraordinary diversity found there is much older than generally thought.
New research shows that Amazonian diversity has evolved as by-product of the Andean mountain uplift over millions of years, despite previous focus on the more recent history. (Credit: iStockphoto/Morley Read)
The findings from this study, which draws on research by the Academy's Dr. John Lundberg and other scientists, were published as a review article in the journal Science. The study shows that Amazonian diversity has evolved as by-product of the Andean mountain uplift over millions of years, despite previous focus on the more recent history.
The vast Amazonian rainforest is arguably the most species-rich terrestrial ecosystem in the world, yet the timing of the original and evolutionary causes of this diversity are a matter of debate.
The authors compare modern diversity patterns with geological and molecular datasets and show that the highest species diversity in Amazonia today is found on a surface of Andean origin spanning more than a million square kilometers, which has been formed in the past 23 million years. This tight link between the geological history of the Andes and the development of the Amazon basin means that studies aiming to understand how the mega-diverse Amazonian forests have evolved need to look further back in time, to the past 20 million years.
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Science 12 November 2010:
Vol. 330. no. 6006, pp. 927 - 931
DOI: 10.1126/science.1194585
Amazonia Through Time: Andean Uplift, Climate Change, Landscape Evolution, and Biodiversity
C. Hoorn,1,* F. P. Wesselingh,2 H. ter Steege,3 M. A. Bermudez,4 A. Mora,5 J. Sevink,1 I. Sanmartín,6A. Sanchez-Meseguer,6 C. L. Anderson,6 J. P. Figueiredo,7 C. Jaramillo,8 D. Riff,9 F. R. Negri,10 H. Hooghiemstra,1 J. Lundberg,11 T. Stadler,12 T. Särkinen,13 A. Antonelli14,*,
The Amazonian rainforest is arguably the most species-rich terrestrial ecosystem in the world, yet the timing of the origin and evolutionary causes of this diversity are a matter of debate. We review the geologic and phylogenetic evidence from Amazonia and compare it with uplift records from the Andes. This uplift and its effect on regional climate fundamentally changed the Amazonian landscape by reconfiguring drainage patterns and creating a vast influx of sediments into the basin. On this "Andean" substrate, a region-wide edaphic mosaic developed that became extremely rich in species, particularly in Western Amazonia. We show that Andean upliftwas crucial for the evolution of Amazonian landscapes and ecosystems, and that current biodiversity patterns are rooted deep in the pre-Quaternary.
1 Paleoecology and Landscape Ecology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, Netherlands.
2 Nederlands Centrum voor Biodiversiteit Naturalis, P.O. Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands.
3 Institute of Environmental Biology, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, Netherlands.
4 Laboratorios de Termocronología y Geomatemáticas, Escuela de Geología, Minas y Geofísica. Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Postal Code 1053, Caracas, Venezuela.
5 ECOPETROL, Instituto Colombiano del Petroleo, Piedecuesta, Santander, Colombia.
6 Real Jardin Botanico, CSIC, Plaza de Murillo 2, 28014 Madrid, Spain.
7 Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras), Av. Republica do Chile, 330, 14o Andar, CEP 20.031-170, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
8 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 0843-03092, Balboa, Republic of Panama.
9 Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Campus Umuarama, Bloco 2D-sala 28, Rua Ceará s/n, Bairro Umuarama, Uberlândia, CEP 38400-902, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
10 Laboratório de Paleontologia, Campus Floresta, Universidade Federal do Acre, Estrada do Canela Fina, Km 12, Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, CEP 69980-000, AC, Brazil.
11 Department of Ichthyology, Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA.
12 Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Universitätsstrasse 16, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
13 Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK.
14 Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zürich, Zollikerstrasse 107, CH 8008 Zürich, Switzerland.
Present address: Gothenburg Botanical Garden, Carl Skottsbergs Gata 22A, 413 19 Göteborg, Sweden, and Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Carl Skottsbergs Gata 22B, 413 19 Göteborg, Sweden.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
carina.hoorn@milne.cc (C.H.);alexandre.antonelli@vgregion.se (A.A.)
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