Abstract: Aim. Dispersal explains the disjunct distributions of many austral plant lineages.
However, the role of Antarctica is largely uncertain and the routes of
dispersal have remained speculative. Based on niche conservatism we can make
predictions about the timing of disjunction establishment, as well as the availability
of direct transoceanic, Antarctic stepping-stone, and out-of-Antarctica
dispersal routes over time. We evaluate these predictions using molecular
divergence time estimates for the establishment of disjunct distributions across
multiple plant lineages.
Location. Southern Hemisphere.
Methods. We estimated the timing of disjunction establishment and determined
habitat affinities for 72 austral plant groups. We used Wilcoxon rank
sum tests to compare the timing of disjunction establishment between cold
and temperate climate lineages for the full data set, as well as within several
subsets. We compared our results with those from a literature survey.
Results. As niche conservatism predicts, the timing of disjunction establishment
in cold and temperate climate austral lineages is consistent with the availability
of the corresponding habitats over time. Our results also suggest that
disjunction establishment has involved a combination of Antarctic and direct
dispersal routes. For cold climate lineages, both out-of-Antarctica and direct
dispersal routes are required to explain the observed estimates, while stepping
stone routes cannot be ruled out. It appears that for these lineages the importance
of the three dispersal routes differs with environmental, geographical and
temporal context.
Main conclusions. Both direct and Antarctic dispersal routes are necessary to
explain the establishment of contemporary austral distributions. Evidence that
some taxa were, until recently, restricted to Antarctica changes how we view
the evolutionary histories of austral floras and the lineages they contain. Moreover,
that we detect differences in the importance of alternative dispersal routes
suggests that long-distance plant dispersal processes can be explicitly incorporated
into models of climate change response.