Comparative biogeography

Comparative Biogeography Discovering and Classifying Biogeographical Patterns of a Dynamic Earth. Berkeley, CA University of California Press. 

The use of fossil data and molecular clocks in systematics highlights the necessity to introduce the concept of time-slicing into comparative biogeography. Methods available for incorporating temporal information such as Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity (PAE), area cladistics, and Temporally Partitioned Component Analysis (TPCA), are discussed and compared to a synchronic approach. An analysis of these methods demonstrates the necessity for a synchronic approach and dispels the erroneous division between palaeo and neo biogeography. 

Somero, G.N. (1997). Temperature relationships from molecules to biogeography. Handbook of Physiology. Section 13. Comparative Physiology, Vol. II, pp. 1391-1444, ed. W.H. Dantzler. Oxford Oxford University Press. 

Microcosms do not have some of the characteristics of naturally synthesized ecological structures. Perhaps primary is that multispecies toxicity tests are by nature smaller in scale, thus reducing the number of species that can survive in these enclosed spaces compared to natural systems. This feature is very important since after dosing, every experimental design must make each replicate an island to prevent cross contamination and to protect the environment. Therefore the dynamics of extinction and the coupled stochastic and deterministic features of island biogeography produce effects that must be separated from that of the toxicant. Ensuring that each replicate is as similar as possible over the short term minimizes the differential effects of the enforced isolation, but eventually divergence occurs. 

Fontaneto, D., Ficetola, G.F., Ambrosini, R., Ricci, C. (2006). Patterns of diversity in microscopic animals are they comparable to those in protists or in larger animals Global Ecology and Biogeography 15,153-162. 

Check with data not used for tree construction if the result is plausible. For example, compare with other data sets. The corresponding trees should have the same topology as the first one. Above all, describe the fit of further information (ecology, physiology and biogeography) to the evolutionary scenario implied by a given tree. 

Arbogast, B.S. and Kenagy, G.J., Comparative phylogeography as an integrative approach to historical biogeography, J. Biogeogr., 28, 819-825, 2001. 

Page, R.D.M., Quantitative cladistic biogeography constructing and comparing area cladograms, Syst. ZooL, 37, 254-270, 1988(1989). 

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