2023-07-07 10:50:25
Babysitter – OCTAVIO JIMÉNEZ ROBLES
MADRID, 7 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A study helps explain why the rate of species exchange was at least twice as high from west to east than the other way around across the Wallace Linewhich separates Asia and Oceania.
Published in Science, the research included an analysis of more than 20,000 species belonging to the 227 families of terrestrial vertebrates present in the Indo-Australian archipelago.
As tectonic plates merged, once-disparate continents connected, creating new opportunities for biotic exchange. The movement of species across the newly connected continents millions of years ago continues to shape assemblages of flora and fauna today.
One of the best known biotic exchanges occurred after the convergence of the Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which created a geologically complex archipelago made up of thousands of islands.
There is one of the most recognizable patterns in biogeography: the faunal discontinuity through what is known as the Wallace Line. Although the distribution of species along this line is asymmetric, the mechanisms underlying this pattern remain poorly understood.
Alexander Skeels of ETH Zurich/Swiss Federal Institute for Forestry, Snow and Landscape Research WSL/Australian National University has combined paleoenvironmental reconstructions of temperature, rainfall and plate tectonics over the last 30 million years with a model Biodiversity Mechanism to better understand the dynamics underlying major biotic exchanges and the biogeographic patterns they produce.
The team found that rainfall tolerance and dispersal ability influenced the movements of vertebrate species across the Wallace Line, informa ETH Zurich.
According to their conclusions, species that evolved in the dry regions of Australia were less able to cross into Asia (east-west trade), while large tracts of tropical forests across Asia and New Guinea they allowed more species to move in the other direction (from west to east).
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