Micro and Macroevolution in the Rand Flora pattern: new advances in analytical tools integrating phylogenomics and phylogeography

Abstract

In a context of rapid climate change, such as the global warming that is currently affecting planet Earth, it is essential to understand how organisms are going to react in the long term: whether they will be able to survive, with or without changes, or on the contrary, global extinction will occur (Willis & MacDonald, 2011; Pecl et al., 2017). Studying other events of climate change and greenhouse effect that have occurred throughout Earth’s history can provide important clues on how species have responded in the past, and this, in turn, may help us estimate what would be the effects on present biodiversity in the future (Steffen et al., 2018). During the Pliocene, Earth’s temperatures rose 1.8-3.6°C with respect to pre-industrial times, leading to an increasing aridity trend across the planet (Haywood et al., 2013). Hence, it has been pointed out that analyzing biotic changes that took place during this period may be the best strategy to predict the outcome for Earth’s biodiversity in the next 100 years (Burke et al., 2018)...