dc.contributor.author	Warren, Ben H.
dc.contributor.author	Bakker, Freek T.
dc.contributor.author	Bellstedt, Dirk U.
dc.contributor.author	Bytebier, Benny
dc.contributor.author	Claszen-Bockhoff, Regine
dc.contributor.author	Dreyer, Leanne L.
dc.contributor.author	Edwards, Dawn
dc.contributor.author	Forest, Felix
dc.contributor.author	Galley, Chloe
dc.contributor.author	Hardy, Christopher R.
dc.contributor.author	Linder, H. Peter
dc.contributor.author	Muasya, A. Muthama
dc.contributor.author	Mummenhoff, Klaus
dc.contributor.author	Oberlander, Kenneth C.
dc.contributor.author	Quint, Marcus
dc.contributor.author	Richardson, James E.
dc.contributor.author	Savolainen, Vincent
dc.contributor.author	Schrire, Brian D.
dc.contributor.author	Van der Niet, Timotheus
dc.contributor.author	Verboom, G. Anthony
dc.contributor.author	Yesson, Christopher
dc.contributor.author	Hawkins, Julie A.
dc.date.accessioned	2011-03-13T10:57:48Z
dc.date.available	2011-03-13T10:57:48Z
dc.date.issued	2011-02
dc.date.updated	2011-02-25T13:25:05Z
dc.description.abstract	ABSTRACT: Background: The best documented survival responses of organisms to past climate change on short (glacial-interglacial) timescales are distributional shifts. Despite ample evidence on such timescales for local adaptations of populations at specific sites, the long-term impacts of such changes on evolutionary significant units in response to past climatic change have been little documented. Here we use phylogenies to reconstruct changes in distribution and flowering ecology of the Cape flora - South Africa's biodiversity hotspot - through a period of past (Neogene and Quaternary) changes in the seasonality of rainfall over a timescale of several million years. Results: Forty-three distributional and phenological shifts consistent with past climatic change occur across the flora, and a comparable number of clades underwent adaptive changes in their flowering phenology (9 clades; half of the clades investigated) as underwent distributional shifts (12 clades; two thirds of the clades investigated). Of extant Cape angiosperm species, 14-41% have been contributed by lineages that show distributional shifts consistent with past climate change, yet a similar proportion (14-55%) arose from lineages that shifted flowering phenology. Conclusions: Adaptive changes in ecology at the scale we uncover in the Cape and consistent with past climatic change have not been documented for other floras. Shifts in climate tolerance appear to have been more important in this flora than is currently appreciated, and lineages that underwent such shifts went on to contribute a high proportion of the flora's extant species diversity. That shifts in phenology, on an evolutionary timescale and on such a scale, have not yet been detected for other floras is likely a result of the method used; shifts in flowering phenology cannot be detected in the fossil record.	en_ZA
dc.description.version	Publishers' version
dc.format.extent	11 p. : ill.
dc.identifier.citation	Warren, B.H. et al. 2011. Consistent phenological shifts in the making of a biodiversity hotspot : the Cape flora. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 11(1):39.	en_ZA
dc.identifier.issn	1471-2148
dc.identifier.other	http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-39
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/6399
dc.language.iso	en_ZA	en_ZA
dc.language.rfc3066	en
dc.publisher	BioMed Central	en_ZA
dc.rights.holder	Warren et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.	en_ZA
dc.subject	Flora -- South Africa -- Western Cape	en_ZA
dc.subject	Phenology	en_ZA
dc.subject	Biodiversity	en_ZA
dc.title	Consistent phenological shifts in the making of a biodiversity hotspot : the Cape flora	en_ZA
dc.type	Article	en_ZA

Consistent phenological shifts in the making of a biodiversity hotspot : the Cape flora

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