Ruolo dei processi microevolutivi nella nascita degli hotspot insulari di biodiversità: il caso del sistema sardo-corso
Author(s)
Bisconti, Roberta
Date Issued
March 20, 2012
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
Islands have a longstanding and fruitful history as natural laboratories for the study of ecological and evolutionary processes, and they are of disproportionate relevance as biodiversity hotspots. In spite of this, still little is known about what microevolutionary and historical demographic processes occurred within islands during the Plio-Pleistocene evolutionary history of island endemics, as well testified by the paucity of intra-island phylogeographies available to date. I investigated the evolutionary history of two amphibians endemic to the Corsica-Sardinia island complex, the temperate treefrog Hyla sarda and the mountain newt Euproctus montanus, using phylogeographic, historical demographic and spatial distribution modeling approaches. I found evidence of demographic expansions during the last glaciation, of repeated cycles of population fragmentation and secondary admixture, and of multiple evolutionary lineages of likely Pliocene divergence, all events occurred within single islands. These results point out that microevolutionary processes acting at the intra-island level could have been largely understated in the past, that the diversity of responses of species to paleoenvironmental changes could have been even wider than previously thoughts, and that the Corsica-Sardinia island complex could be a top-level laboratory for the study of such diversity.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Ecologia e gestione delle risorse biologiche
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