Brownstein Chase D, Harrington Richard C, Alencar Laura R V, Bellwood David R, Choat John H, Rocha Luiz A, Wainwright Peter C, Tavera Jose, Burress Edward D, Muñoz Martha M, Cowman Peter F, Near Thomas J
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center, 21 Sachem Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Department of Natural Resources, Marine Resources Research Institute, 217 Ft. Johnson Road, Charleston, SC 29412, USA.
Sci Adv. 2025 May 9;11(19):eadu6149. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adu6149. Epub 2025 May 7.
Oceans blanket more than two-thirds of Earth's surface, yet marine biodiversity is disproportionately concentrated in coral reefs. Investigating the origins of this exceptional diversity is crucial for predicting how reefs will respond to anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we use a genome-scale dataset to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the wrasses and parrotfishes (), which rank among the most species-rich and ecologically diverse lineages of reef fishes. We show that major labrid clades experienced pulses of evolutionary innovation and accelerated diversification during the Miocene approximately 20 to 15 million years ago that the origin of no single phenotypic trait can explain. These results draw parallels to the evolutionary histories of many clades after mass extinctions and corroborate recent fossil evidence for an Early Miocene extinction event in oceanic vertebrates and changes in coral reef faunal composition. Our data provide genomic evidence for a major Early Miocene reassembly of reef faunas.
海洋覆盖了地球表面三分之二以上的面积，但海洋生物多样性却极不均衡地集中在珊瑚礁中。探究这种非凡多样性的起源对于预测珊瑚礁将如何应对人为干扰至关重要。在这里，我们使用一个基因组规模的数据集来重建隆头鱼和鹦嘴鱼（）的进化历史，它们是珊瑚礁鱼类中物种最丰富、生态多样性最高的谱系之一。我们表明，主要的隆头鱼进化枝在大约2000万至1500万年前的中新世经历了进化创新和加速多样化的脉冲，没有单一表型特征的起源能够解释这一现象。这些结果与许多类群在大规模灭绝后的进化历史相似，并证实了最近关于海洋脊椎动物中新世早期灭绝事件以及珊瑚礁动物群组成变化的化石证据。我们的数据为中新世早期珊瑚礁动物群的重大重组提供了基因组证据。
