Migration barriers in ferns: the case of the neotropical genus Diplopterygium (Gleicheniaceae)

ABSTRACT

Background

Despite the broad distribution of several species in Gleicheniaceae in the neotropical region, Diplopterygium is the only genus having a restricted distribution. Species of Gleicheniaceae occupy open (including anthropogenic) habitats and produce large amounts of wind-dispersed propagules – so why does Diplopterygium bancroftii, the only neotropical species in the genus, have a restricted distribution?

Aims

We investigated if the restricted distribution of Diplopterygium in the Neotropics reflected the absence of suitable areas for the establishment.

Methods

We used species distribution modelling to identify suitability areas during different periods of the Pleistocene (Last Glacial Maximum and Last Interglacial), the Holocene, and the present.

Results

The environmental suitability model at the present time corroborated the current distribution of D. bancroftii, and also evidenced additional suitable potential areas where the species has so far not been recorded, especially in eastern Brazil. In projections of the past, no connectivity was observed between suitable areas in the Andes and eastern Brazil.

Conclusions

As neither the dispersal ability nor the absence of suitable areas at the present time or in the past were limiting factors to the range expansion of Diplopterygium, we discuss possible migration barriers and propose a hypothesis for its colonisation history in the Neotropics.

KEYWORDS:

• Andes
• biogeography
• dispersion
• Gleicheniales
• niche modelling
• pteridophytes

Acknowledgements

We thank Fernando Bittencourt Matos for gently allow the use of his photographs in this manuscript and Ana Carolina Carnaval for the notes about this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) (88887.19244/2018-00); we thank Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for the research grant (201414/2017-1) and scholarship (307115/2017-8) to A. Salino.

Notes on contributors

Lucas V. Lima

All authors made a substantial contribution in the concept and design of the study, to data collection, analysis and interpretation, writing and revising the manuscript, and adding intellectual content.

Lucas Vieira Lima is a Ph.D. student, interested in systematics, evolution, and biogeography of ferns and lycophytes.

Ubirajara Oliveira

Ubirajara Oliveira has a Ph.D. in zoology and works in the areas of biogeography, macroecology, biodiversity conservation and environmental spatial modelling.

Thaís E. Almeida

Thaís Elias Almeida is a lecturer in botany and is interested in understanding the evolution of biodiversity, focusing on the tropical lineages of vascular seedless plants, employing integrative approaches.

Marcelo L. Bueno

Marcelo Leandro Bueno is a lecturer in botany with an approach in plant ecology and has been working with focus in macroecology, species distribution modelling and evolutionary process.

Alexandre Salino

Alexandre Salino is professor of botany, and curator of herbarium with a research interest focused on the systematics, evolution, and biogeography of ferns and lycophytes.