The Impact of Ecology and Biogeography on Legume Diversity,Endemism, and Phylogeny in the Caribbean Region: A New Direction in Historical Biogeography

The legume family is so well represented in the Caribbean that if a preserve was needed somewhere on earth to harbor all of the primary lineages in this family, the flora of just Cuba would suffice. Molecular phylogenetic, biogeographic, and evolutionary rates analysis all suggest that legume diversity and endemism in the Caribbean are mostly of recent origin and are likely a function of the abundance of seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) throughout the neotropics. Legumes have a strong ecological affinity for SDTFs, and the Caribbean basin is well covered by this forest type. Rate-variable molecular clock analysis suggests that the majority of worldwide island lineages of legumes have ages of much less than 30 Ma. Singular historical events invoking land bridges or mobile continental plates are thus not needed to explain Caribbean legume diversity and endemism. The Greater Antilles are large islands located close to the American continent. They are therefore expected to fairly represent the diverse continental lineages of legumes. Yet, they are distant enough to be dispersal limited. As such, island lineages can speciate and diversify over evolutionary time unimpeded by high rates of immigration from the mainland. Vicariance and other standard phylogenetic methods of historical biogeography are likely to be replaced by those of ecological and island biogeography. This is because model selection approaches derived from the neutral concept of isolation by distance will be able to quantify patterns of alpha and beta diversity and detect niche assembly and phylogenetic niche conservatism within and among metacommunities that are hypothesized to constrain phylogeny.