Extant species fail to estimate ancestral geographical ranges at older nodes in primate phylogeny

A clade’s evolutionary history is shaped, in part, by geographical range
expansion, sweepstakes dispersal and local extinction. A rigorous
understanding of historical biogeography may therefore yield insights into
macroevolutionary dynamics such as adaptive radiation. Modern historical
biogeographic analyses typically fit statistical models to molecular
phylogenies, but it remains unclear whether extant species provide
sufficient signal or if well-sampled phylogenies of extinct and extant
taxa are necessary to produce meaningful estimates of past ranges. We
investigated the historical biogeography of Primates and their euarchontan
relatives using a novel meta-analytical phylogeny of over 900 extant ( n =
419) and extinct ( n = 483) species spanning their entire evolutionary
history. Ancestral range estimates for young nodes were largely congruent
with those derived from molecular phylogeny. However, node age exerts a
significant effect on ancestral range estimate congruence, and the
probability of congruent inference dropped below 0.5 for nodes older than
the late Eocene, corresponding to the origins of higher-level clades.
Discordance was not observed in analyses of extinct taxa alone. Fossils
are essential for robust ancestral range inference and biogeographic
analyses of extant clades originating in the deep past should be viewed
with scepticism without them.