Comparative and predictive phylogeography in the South American diagonal of open formations: Unravelling the biological and environmental influences on multitaxon demography

Phylogeography investigates historical drivers of species’ geographic distribution. Special attention has been given to ecological, climatic, and geological processes in the diversification of the Neotropical biota. Several species sampled across the dry diagonal of South America (DDSA, comprising the Caatinga, Cerrado, and Chaco biomes) experienced range shifts coincident with Quaternary climatic changes. However, studies across different spatial, temporal, and biological scales on species from South America’s dry biomes are still poorly represented. Here, we combine phylogeographic model selection and machine learning predictive frameworks to investigate the influence of Pleistocene climatic changes on both plant and animal species from the DDSA. We assembled mitochondrial/chloroplastic DNA sequences in public repositories and inferred the historical demographic responses of 70 lineages. We then built a random forest model using both biotic and abiotic information to identify potentia...