Sunda-Sahul floristic exchange and pathways into the Southwest Pacific: New insights from wet tropical forest trees

Aim Recent investigations on the floristic exchange between Southeast Asia and Australia have shown a clear dispersal directionality bias (West to East) of wet-adapted plant taxa. However, dispersal routes and directions of wet forest taxa into the South Pacific remain insufficiently known. We here aimed to establish the most likely routes and directions of plant dispersal into the Southwest Pacific islands.
Location Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia, Southwest Pacific.
Taxon Dysoxylum s.l. (Meliaceae). This includes Dysoxylum s.s., Didymocheton, Epicharis, Goniocheton, Pseudocarapa and Prasoxylon.
Method We sampled 75% of the species diversity in Dysoxylum s.l., covering the entire distribution range, all genera and major lineages. Phylogenetic relationships of 149 accessions were reconstructed using Bayesian Evolutionary Analysis and two internal constraints. The dispersal–extinction–cladogenesis variant, founder-event speciation (DEC+J), was used for reconstructing the biogeograph..., ,