[Taxacom] Meliaceae (vicariance??)

[Michael Heads]

Ken, you still haven't explained the phenomena – e.g. why exactly are
Meliaceae + Simaroubaceae absent from such a large part of the central
Pacific where their sister group, Rutaceae, is so diverse? And why do they
overlap on so many other tropical islands?

Your basic theory for biogeography (chance) is based entirely on negative
evidence – the absence of early fossils. However, the fossil record of
Meliaceae is very sparse, and there are endless debates about the
identification of all the earliest fossils.

Huge gaps in the fossil record are common. For example, in coelacanths
(order Coelacanthiformes; two living species, 150 extinct fossil species),
the youngest fossil is 65 million years old (Grande, 2016). In lampreys
(order Petromyzontiformes; 38 living species), the youngest fossil is 120
million years old. In hagfishes (order Myxiniformes; 20 living species),
the only fossil is 300 million years old. These marine animals live in
conditions that are much more conducive to fossilisation than rain forest
plants such as Meliaceae.

*Reference*

Grande, L. (2016). Donn Rosen and the perils of paleontology. In: Crother,
B.I. & Parenti, L.R. (eds) *Assumptions inhibiting progress in comparative
biology, *pp. 159–168*. *Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis.


On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 3:12 AM Kenneth Kinman via Taxacom <
taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:

>        I agree that I shouldn't have used the word ignore.   Instead I
> should have said something like "panbiogeographers tend to over-estimate
> the importance of vicariance and under-estimate the importance of
> dispersal, which can be particularly misleading with taxa at higher
> taxonomic levels (Orders and Families).
>       Anyway, I would be very surprised if anyone ever found Meliaceae
> fossils that were 120 million years old (much less 140 million years old).
> I doubt that Meliaceae and Rutaceae had evolved that early (and I am
> certainly not alone).
>                              ------------------Ken
>
> ________________________________
> From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, November 16, 2019 7:52 PM
> To: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
> Cc: Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com>; taxacom <
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Meliaceae (vicariance??)
>
> Nicely summarized with precise details (vs my overly general description).
> And I overlooked that remark about panbiogeographers ignoring dispersal -
> which they do not of course and never have. Its one of those myths that
> keeps popping up over the decades.
>
> John Grehan
>
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-- 
Dunedin, New Zealand.

My books:

*Biogeography and evolution in New Zealand. *Taylor and Francis/CRC, Boca
Raton FL. 2017.
https://www.routledge.com/Biogeography-and-Evolution-in-New-Zealand/Heads/p/book/9781498751872


*Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge. 2014. www.cambridge.org/9781107041028


*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University of California Press,
Berkeley. 2012. www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn—80520271968


*Panbiogeography: Tracking the history of life*. Oxford University Press,
New York. 1999. (With R. Craw and J. Grehan).
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Bm0_QQ3Z6GUC
<http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Bm0_QQ3Z6GUC&dq=panbiogeography&source=gbs_navlinks_s>