Evidence for a Cenozoic radiation of ferns in an angiosperm-dominated canopy.
Abstract
In today's angiosperm-dominated terrestrial ecosystems, leptosporangiate ferns are
truly exceptional--accounting for 80% of the approximately 11,000 nonflowering vascular
plant species. Recent studies have shown that this remarkable diversity is mostly
the result of a major leptosporangiate radiation beginning in the Cretaceous, following
the rise of angiosperms. This pattern is suggestive of an ecological opportunistic
response, with the proliferation of flowering plants across the landscape resulting
in the formation of many new niches--both on forest floors and within forest canopies--into
which leptosporangiate ferns could diversify. At present, one-third of leptosporangiate
species grow as epiphytes in the canopies of angiosperm-dominated tropical rain forests.
However, we know too little about the evolutionary history of epiphytic ferns to assess
whether or not their diversification was in fact linked to the establishment of these
forests, as would be predicted by the ecological opportunistic response hypothesis.
Here we provide new insight into leptosporangiate diversification and the evolution
of epiphytism by integrating a 400-taxon molecular dataset with an expanded set of
fossil age constraints. We find evidence for a burst of fern diversification in the
Cenozoic, apparently driven by the evolution of epiphytism. Whether this explosive
radiation was triggered simply by the establishment of modern angiosperm-dominated
tropical rain forest canopies, or spurred on by some other large-scale extrinsic factor
(e.g., climate change) remains to be determined. In either case, it is clear that
in both the Cretaceous and Cenozoic, leptosporangiate ferns were adept at exploiting
newly created niches in angiosperm-dominated ecosystems.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21800Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1073/pnas.0811136106Publication Info
Schuettpelz, E; & Pryer, KM (2009). Evidence for a Cenozoic radiation of ferns in an angiosperm-dominated canopy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(27). pp. 11200-11205. 10.1073/pnas.0811136106. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21800.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Kathleen M. Pryer
Professor of Biology

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