Wilson Rosemary, Heinrichs Jochen, Hentschel Jörn, Gradstein S Robbert, Schneider Harald
Albrecht-von-Haller Institute of Plant Sciences, Georg-August University Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany.
Biol Lett. 2007 Oct 22;3(5):566-9. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2007.0287.
Tropical forests contain the majority of extant plant diversity and their role as a cradle and/or museum of biodiversity is an important issue in our attempts to assess the long-term consequences of global climate change for terrestrial biomes. Highly diverse groups of liverworts are an often ignored but extremely common element in rainforests, and thus their evolution may shed light on the ecological robustness of rainforest biomes to climate fluctuations. We record a remarkable constant accumulation of diversity through time for the most species-rich family of liverworts, Lejeuneaceae, inferred by divergence time estimates. The observed pattern supports the recently developed concept of a dual role of the tropics as both a museum and a cradle of biodiversity.
热带森林包含了现存植物多样性的大部分，在我们试图评估全球气候变化对陆地生物群落的长期影响时，其作为生物多样性的摇篮和/或博物馆的作用是一个重要问题。高度多样化的叶苔类群是雨林中常被忽视但极为常见的元素，因此它们的进化可能有助于揭示雨林生物群落对气候波动的生态稳健性。通过分歧时间估计推断，我们记录了叶苔科这个物种最丰富的叶苔类家族随时间推移显著持续的多样性积累。观察到的模式支持了最近提出的热带地区作为生物多样性的博物馆和摇篮的双重作用这一概念。
