Exercise 9:

INFERRING BIOGEOGRAPHICAL HISTORIES

USING S-DIVA
Course Facilitators:
Evolutionary Biology Laboratory: Bio 427L
BIOGEOGRAPHY

THE STUDY OF DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS.

RELEVANCE OF
BIOGEOGRAPHY

It’s relevance to biology:

1. What allows a species to thrive in its area, and what prevents it
from colonizing other areas?
2. What are the species’ closest relatives and where are they found?
Where did their ancestors live?
3. How did historical events shape a species’ distribution?
TWO DIVISIONS OF
BIOGEOGRAPHY

Based on the importance of time, can be further divided into two:

1. Ecological biogeography – the distribution of organisms and its
short-term ecological impacts.
2. Historical biogeography – the distribution of organisms as a
consequence to historical events.
HISTORICAL
BIOGEOGRAPHY

1. Deciphering the origins and ancestral ranges of organisms.

2. Association of historical events over geological periods that
shaped the organisms’ distribution and pattern of evolution.
HISTORICAL
BIOGEOGRAPHY

Key processes that shaped the distribution of organisms:

1. Dispersal
2. Vicariance

Both processes lead to disjunction, a discontinuous range of closely

related taxa separated by a wide geographical distance.
DISPERSAL

The movement of organisms or populations from a point of

origin into another environment.

1. Lessen intraspecific competition

2. Overpopulation leading to congestion
3. Search for new resources and suitable habitat
VICARIANCE

Geographical range of organisms is split by formation of a

barrier.

1. Occurs through formation of natural barriers, plate

tectonic movement, or natural disasters.
2. Isolation gives rise to different, but related, species in
disjunctions.
 PATAGONIA

NEW ZEALAND
DISPERSAL or VICARIANCE?
 30
MYA
PALAWAN
 20
MYA
PALAWAN
 10
MYA
DEVELOPMENT OF
BIOGEOGRAPHY
Developments that revamped biogeography as a field of study in the
20th Century:

1. The acceptance of plate tectonics

2. New phylogenetic techniques and data
3. New and improved methods of ecological research
4. Investigations in the factors limiting distribution.
A NEW APPROACH TO
HISTORICAL BIOGEOGRAPHY

S-DIVA (Statistical Dispersal-Vicariance Analysis) by Yu et al. 2010;

2015
• Implemented in RASP (Reconstruct Ancestral State in Phylogenies)
software.
• Quantitative approach to recreate ancestral distributions using
phylogenetic and distributional data.
OBJECTIVES:

1. To understand the mechanisms that drove the evolution and

geographical distributions of organisms.
2. To learn how biogeographical origins of organisms are inferred
using S-DIVA in the software RASP.
3. To infer biogeographical origins of the taxa being investigated.