Evolutionary Origin of Biodiversity Hotspots with a Mediterranean Climate (HOTMED)
Leucospermum sp. (Proteaceae)
Understanding the origin of species richness in Earth’s biodiversity hotspots is vital to develop effective conservation strategies. For a long time, conservation research has focused largely on processes at the population or species level. The importance of deeper time history of modern biota is now accepted and phylogenies are being recognised as valuable tools for prioritization decisions in conservation planning. Incorporating information from past biodiversity (i.e. fossil evidence) to understand how it has responded to climate change in the past is essential to predict how modern biodiversity might evolve in the future. Among the recognised hotspots of biodiversity on Earth, all five main regions with a Mediterranean climate are included: The California Floristic Province; Central Chile; The Mediterranean Basin; The Cape Floristic Region and Southwest Australia. Although different in organismal composition, promising lessons are expected from comparative studies of those regions. This project focuses on and compares the evolutionary history of the three Mediterranean hotspots located in the Southern Hemisphere (Southwest Australia, the Cape Floristic Region, Central Chile) using a particularly well-suited plant group (Proteaceae) that is shared by the three regions and has diversified remarkably in two of them.
The project benefits from a grant from the European Commission and runs until 2008. During this time, Dr Hervé Sauquet will spend time between the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney and RBG Kew to help achieve the project objectives: (a) to build a palaeo-morphology database and supertree for Proteaceae and (b) to use these data to better understand the origin of hotspots with a Mediterranean climate and publish at least six high-profile papers.
Project Team
Project Leader: Savolainen, Vincent
Jodrell Laboratory
Martyn Powell, Sarah Rendell, Hervé Sauquet, Vincent Savolainen
Project Partners and Collaborators
Australia
Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney
Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne
University of Queensland
University of Tasmania
New Zealand
Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences
South Africa
Rhodes University
University of Witwatersrand
Sweden
Swedish Museum of Natural History
USA
Florida State University
Funders
The European Commission