1] Department of Conservation Biology and Evolution, Institute of Botany, University of Liège, Liège 4000, Belgium [2] Institut für Systematische Botanik, University of Zürich, Zürich 8008, Switzerland.
Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA.
Nat Commun. 2014 Oct 27;5:5134. doi: 10.1038/ncomms6134.
Unraveling the macroevolutionary history of bryophytes, which arose soon after the origin of land plants but exhibit substantially lower species richness than the more recently derived angiosperms, has been challenged by the scarce fossil record. Here we demonstrate that overall estimates of net species diversification are approximately half those reported in ferns and ∼30% those described for angiosperms. Nevertheless, statistical rate analyses on time-calibrated large-scale phylogenies reveal that mosses and liverworts underwent bursts of diversification since the mid-Mesozoic. The diversification rates further increase in specific lineages towards the Cenozoic to reach, in the most recently derived lineages, values that are comparable to those reported in angiosperms. This suggests that low diversification rates do not fully account for current patterns of bryophyte species richness, and we hypothesize that, as in gymnosperms, the low extant bryophyte species richness also results from massive extinctions.
解析苔藓植物的宏观进化历史一直具有挑战性，因为它们在陆生植物起源后不久就出现了，但物种丰富度却远低于后来衍生的被子植物。这里我们证明，净种多样化的总体估计值大约是蕨类植物报道值的一半，约为被子植物描述值的 30%。然而，在时间校准的大规模系统发育上的统计速率分析表明，苔藓植物和地钱植物从中生代中期开始经历了多样化的爆发。在新生代，这些多样化速率在特定的谱系中进一步增加，在最近衍生的谱系中，达到了与被子植物报告值相当的值。这表明低多样化速率并不能完全解释当前苔藓植物物种丰富度的模式，我们假设，与裸子植物一样，现存苔藓植物的低物种丰富度也是由于大规模灭绝造成的。
