Molecular archives of climatic history (MOLARCH)
EUROCORES PROGRAMMES - Challenges of Biodiversity Science (EuroDIVERSITY) 05_EDIV_FP237-MOLARCH (this website will be opened in a new window)
Summary
Little is known about the evolutionary response of species to global climate change because time scales are too long to be directly studied.
The objective of our project is to implement an approach that combines phylogenetic and paleoclimate data to test how patterns of evolutionary diversification agree with predictions of three groups of hypotheses:
- the turnover pulse and paleo-ecological incumbency hypotheses, predicting that speciation pulses across major taxa coincide with times of major environmental changes;
- the ecological locking hypothesis, also predicts simultaneous speciation pulses but not necessarily at times of major environmental changes;
- the individual response hypothesis, predicts no correlation of speciation pulses across taxa.
The project will use appropriate methods to test the three working hypotheses on the basis of molecular phylogenies from selected species-assemblages (fishes, molluscs & crustaceans) of Lakes Baikal and Tanganyika. In total 4 expeditions, 2 on each lake are scheduled for the first two years of the project.
This project is carried our by an international team of closely collaborating partners that organize two meetings/year to discuss the deliverables of this project.
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