Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7.3
Types of species range dynamics. (a) Stasis; (b) stasis postexpansion;
(c) age and area; (d) cyclic; (e) idiosyncratic.
The time lapse of phylogeographic analyses is skewed to Pleistocene
and Holocene time frames, with some studies extending back into Pliocene
and Miocene. A recent development, paleophylogeography (Betancourt
2004), has revealed phylogeographic structure in fossil populations. An ana-
lysis (Kuch et al. 2002) of ancient cytochrome b fragments from rodent fecal
pellets from the Atacama Desert (Chile) has provided interesting insights on
paleophylogeography.
In animal species, mtDNA has proven useful for phylogeographic stud-
ies, but in plants it evolves quickly with respect to gene order but slowly in
nucleotide sequence, so it is of limited utility (Crisci et al. 2000). Chloroplast
