Premium
Antitropicality and convergent evolution: a case study of P ermian neospiriferine brachiopods
Author(s) -
Lee Sangmin,
Shi G. R.,
Park Heeju,
Tazawa JunIchi
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
palaeontology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.69
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1475-4983
pISSN - 0031-0239
DOI - 10.1111/pala.12213
Subject(s) - vicariance , southern hemisphere , biological dispersal , paleontology , phylogenetic tree , biology , clade , ecology , gondwana , habitat , northern hemisphere , zoology , geology , biochemistry , population , demography , sociology , gene , structural basin , climatology
Abstract Antitropical distribution is a biogeographical pattern characterized by natural occurrences of the same species or members of the same clade in the middle‐ or middle‐to‐high‐latitudinal habitats of both hemispheres, either on land or in marine environments, without appearing in the intervening tropical environments. For most of the noted examples of P ermian antitropical distribution, particularly in marine invertebrates, the causes of disjunctions have been mainly linked to either dispersal or vicariance models. Little attention has been paid to other possible mechanisms. This study investigated the antitropicality of some P ermian neospiriferine brachiopods through detailed taxonomic revision, comparison of palaeobiogeographical distribution, and a phylogenetic analysis. Several species, previously assigned to K aninospirifer , are here reassigned to other genera, especially to F asciculatia in the northern hemisphere and to Q uadrospira in the southern hemisphere during the P ermian. Both K aninospirifer and F asciculatia appear to have been restricted to north‐western P angea and north‐eastern A sia during the P ermian, but there is no robust evidence to suggest their presence in the southern hemisphere to which I mperiospira and Q uadrospira were confined. In spite of the distributional separation between the two pairs of neospiriferine genera in the P ermian palaeobiogeographical regime, they share considerable numbers of morphological characters, such as a large shell, subdued fasciculation, and reduction of ventral adminicula. Notwithstanding these morphological similarities, our phylogenetic reconstruction of the neospiriferines does not support a close relationship between these genera. This therefore must indicate that these similar morphological features were independently acquired, probably with these taxa living in spatially separate but ecologically compatible environmental conditions in the mid‐latitudinal area of each hemisphere during the P ermian. We regard this as an example of convergent evolution.