Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Speciation and patterns of biodiversity
- 2 On the arbitrary identification of real species
- 3 The evolutionary nature of diversification in sexuals and asexuals
- 4 The poverty of the protists
- 5 Theory, community assembly, diversity and evolution in the microbial world
- 6 Limits to adaptation and patterns of biodiversity
- 7 Dynamic patterns of adaptive radiation: evolution of mating preferences
- 8 Niche dimensionality and ecological speciation
- 9 Progressive levels of trait divergence along a ‘speciation transect’ in the Lake Victoria cichlid fish Pundamilia
- 10 Rapid speciation, hybridization and adaptive radiation in the Heliconius melpomene group
- 11 Investigating ecological speciation
- 12 Biotic interactions and speciation in the tropics
- 13 Ecological influences on the temporal pattern of speciation
- 14 Speciation, extinction and diversity
- 15 Temporal patterns in diversification rates
- 16 Speciation and extinction in the fossil record of North American mammals
- Index
- Plate section
- References
16 - Speciation and extinction in the fossil record of North American mammals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Speciation and patterns of biodiversity
- 2 On the arbitrary identification of real species
- 3 The evolutionary nature of diversification in sexuals and asexuals
- 4 The poverty of the protists
- 5 Theory, community assembly, diversity and evolution in the microbial world
- 6 Limits to adaptation and patterns of biodiversity
- 7 Dynamic patterns of adaptive radiation: evolution of mating preferences
- 8 Niche dimensionality and ecological speciation
- 9 Progressive levels of trait divergence along a ‘speciation transect’ in the Lake Victoria cichlid fish Pundamilia
- 10 Rapid speciation, hybridization and adaptive radiation in the Heliconius melpomene group
- 11 Investigating ecological speciation
- 12 Biotic interactions and speciation in the tropics
- 13 Ecological influences on the temporal pattern of speciation
- 14 Speciation, extinction and diversity
- 15 Temporal patterns in diversification rates
- 16 Speciation and extinction in the fossil record of North American mammals
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Introduction
Paleontological data have been used for decades to address a series of very general and intrinsically interesting questions concerning speciation. Many of them are essentially microevolutionary, morphological or both. What is the relative prevalence of anagenesis and cladogensis (Wagner & Erwin 1995)? Do constraints on morphology cause occupation of morphospace to slow down as diversity increases (Foote 1993)? Is morphological change gradual or punctuated across speciation events (Simpson 1944)?
A survey of the analytical paleobiology literature would reveal, however, that interest in all of these questions has waned over the last decade or two. The one topic relating to speciation that remains very popular is the quantification and modelling of turnover rates (Foote 1994b, 2000, 2003; Sepkoski 1998; Newman & Eble 1999; Kirchner and Weil 2000; Allen et al. 2006; Alroy 2008). Coincidentally and fortuitously, the explosion of molecular data sets and great improvements in phylogenetic methods have led to quantifying speciation rates by tracking the accumulation of lineages through time (Nee et al. 1992, 1994; Purvis et al. 1995; Magallon & Sanderson 2001; Roelants et al. 2007).
Nonetheless, paleontological research has focused far more strongly on taxonomic diversity than on speciation in recent years (Alroy 1996, 1998b, 2000; Miller & Foote 1996; Sepkoski 1997; Alroy et al. 2001, 2008; Connolly & Miller 2001; Peters & Foote 2001; Smith 2001; Jablonski et al. 2003; Bush et al. 2004; Krug & Patzkowsky 2004; Allen et al. 2006; Crampton et al. 2006).
- Type
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- Information
- Speciation and Patterns of Diversity , pp. 301 - 323Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
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