Evolutionarily younger and faster diversifying plants are more threatened by extinction

Many species are threatened by extinction, yet few factors have been identified to explain this risk across the plant Tree of Life (ToL). Lineages that are evolutionarily younger or occurring within rapidly diversifying clades may have elevated extinction risk because they occupy smaller geographic ranges and adaptive zones as compared with older lineages that have tolerated longer periods of environmental change. Here we find that faster diversifying plant genera had more species at risk of extinction. Evolutionary age had no effect in the 297 genera that we sampled, potentially because of sampling older genera, on average, from across the ToL. Repeating our analyses in two well-sampled and large groups, we found that extinction risk decreased with evolutionary age in conifer species but not palms. Small sample sizes limited our power to detect effects of lineage diversification in these groups. Our results suggest that contrasting modes of speciation may explain differing patterns of extinction risk across the broader ToL and have consequences for biodiversity conservation.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  bioRxiv

• Publication date

  2017-06-27

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/152215
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Linking speciation to extinction: Diversification raises contemporary extinction risk in amphibians

  2017cited by this paper
• Ancient islands acted as refugia and pumps for conifer diversity

  2017cited by this paper
• An all-evidence species-level supertree for the palms (Arecaceae).

  2016cited by this paper
• Diversification rates and species richness across the Tree of Life

  2016cited by this paper
• An updated megaphylogeny of plants, a tool for generating plant phylogenies, and an analysis of phylogenetic community structure

  2016cited by this paper
• A comparative analysis of island floras challenges taxonomy‐based biogeographical models of speciation

  2015cited by this paper
• Palm diversification in two geologically contrasting regions of western Amazonia

  2015cited by this paper
• Global patterns of extinction risk in marine and non-marine systems.

  2015cited by this paper
• The geography and ecology of plant speciation: range overlap and niche divergence in sister species

  2014cited by this paper
• Phylogenetic correlates of extinction risk in mammals: species in older lineages are not at greater risk

  2013cited by this paper
• Macroevolutionary perspectives to environmental change.

  2013cited by this paper
• Hemisphere-scale differences in conifer evolutionary dynamics

  2012cited by this paper
• Extinction Risk and Diversification Are Linked in a Plant Biodiversity Hotspot

  2011cited by this paper
• Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans

  2011cited by this paper
• Origin and global diversification patterns of tropical rain forests: inferences from a complete genus-level phylogeny of palms

  2011cited by this paper
• The shape and temporal dynamics of phylogenetic trees arising from geographic speciation.

  2010cited by this paper
• Unparalleled rates of species diversification in Europe

  2010cited by this paper
• LINEAGES WITH LONG DURATIONS ARE OLD AND MORPHOLOGICALLY AVERAGE: AN ANALYSIS USING MULTIPLE DATASETS

  2007cited by this paper
• Phylogeny and the selectivity of extinction in Australian marsupials

  2002cited by this paper
• ABSOLUTE DIVERSIFICATION RATES IN ANGIOSPERM CLADES

  2001cited by this paper
• Evolutionary age and risk of extinction in the global avifauna

  1997cited by this paper
• ADAPTIVE SHIFT AND DISPERSAL IN A TROPICAL ANT FAUNA

  1959cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.