Symposium: Palaeo and Evolution

Extraordinary diversity and patterns of distribution in tiny subterranean crustaceans: Parabathynellidae (Bathynellacea) of Western Australian arid zone.

Giulia Perina (Western Australian Museum and Curtin University and Biologic Environmental Survey); Ana I. Camacho (Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales); Nicole White (Curtin University); Joel Huey (Biologic Environmental Survey); Shae Callan (Biologic Environmental Survey); Michelle Guzik (The University of Adelaide). Parabathynellidae are small interstitial/subterranean crustaceans that have been restricted to groundwater habitats for a long time, […]

Extraordinary diversity and patterns of distribution in tiny subterranean crustaceans: Parabathynellidae (Bathynellacea) of Western Australian arid zone. Read More »

Insights into global brittle star diversity using a targeted exon capture approach.

Tim O’Hara (Museums Victoria); Maggie Haines (Museums Victoria); Andrew Hugall (Museums Victoria). Ophiuroids, commonly known as brittle stars, are a class of marine invertebrates with over a quarter-billion-year-old evolutionary history. They are globally distributed, occurring from intertidal regions down to the abyssal sea floor. These attributes make them an ideal system to examine evolutionary processes and biogeographic

Insights into global brittle star diversity using a targeted exon capture approach. Read More »

Phylogenomics of South West Pacific nocturnal foraging bees.

Simon M. Tierney (Western Sydney University). The hyperactivity of foraging bees is typically associated with spring blossoms on bright sunny days, however, a diverse range of distantly related bee lineages are unusual in their habit of exclusively foraging in dim-light conditions between dusk and dawn. The successful colonisation of a novel photo-temporal niche, and subsequent speciation

Phylogenomics of South West Pacific nocturnal foraging bees. Read More »

Volcaniclastic silcrete floras in eastern Australia provide new fossil evidence of the fern genus Pteridium (bracken).

Andrew C. Rozefelds (Queensland Museum Network). Pteridium is a cosmopolitan genus occurring in all continents, except Antarctica, and is among the most widespread vascular plant species known; and yet the fossil record world-wide is poor. This is because the fronds disintegrate while they are still on the plant, and the potential for fossilization is therefore limited. At

Volcaniclastic silcrete floras in eastern Australia provide new fossil evidence of the fern genus Pteridium (bracken). Read More »

Impact of fossils on reconstructing ancestral flowers in Ericales.

Julian Herting (Botanic Gardens of Sydney); Jürg Schönenberger (Universität Wien); Hervé Sauquet (Botanic Gardens of Sydney, University of New South Wales, and University of Sydney). Reconstructing ancestral states is an essential tool for understanding the evolution of traits and lineages, but the impact of including fossils in these reconstruction remains largely unexplored. The asterid order Ericales has

Impact of fossils on reconstructing ancestral flowers in Ericales. Read More »

Angiosperm flowers reached their highest morphological diversity early in their evolutionary history.

Andrea M. López-Martínez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México); Susana Magallón (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México); Maria von Balthazar (University of Vienna); Jürg Schönenberger (University of Vienna); Hervé Sauquet (National Herbarium of New South Wales and University of New South Wales); Marion Chartier (University of Vienna). Flowers are the complex and highly diverse reproductive structures of angiosperms. Because

Angiosperm flowers reached their highest morphological diversity early in their evolutionary history. Read More »

Declining rainforests and arid emergence: Ancient Kurrajongs (Brachychiton) of South Australia’s Late Miocene-Pliocene ( ̴7 – 2.3 Mya).

Tara A. Evans (University of Adelaide); Robert S. Hill (University of Adelaide). Brachychiton is composed of 36 species, of which 34 are endemic to Australia. The genus is uniquely diverse, regarding distribution and morphology. Within the literature on the Australian fossil plant record, there are many unsubstantiated reports informally attributing various fossilised leaf specimens to Brachychiton. However, a distinct lack

Declining rainforests and arid emergence: Ancient Kurrajongs (Brachychiton) of South Australia’s Late Miocene-Pliocene ( ̴7 – 2.3 Mya). Read More »

Speciation across biomes: rapid diversification with reproductive isolation in the Australian delicate mice.

Emily Roycroft (Australian National University); Fred Ford (NSW Department of Planning and Environment); William G. Breed (University of Adelaide); Till Ramm (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin); Rhiannon Schembri (Australian National University); Phoebe A. Burns (Zoos Victoria); Kevin C. Rowe (Museums Victoria); Craig Moritz (Australian National University). Phylogeographic studies of continentally distributed clades provide powerful insight into how

Speciation across biomes: rapid diversification with reproductive isolation in the Australian delicate mice. Read More »

Global variation in the relationship between avian phylogenetic diversity and functional distance.

Keaghan J Yaxley (ANU); Alexander Skeels (ANU); Robert A Foley (University of Cambridge). If evolutionary distance is akin to evolutionary chance, then it follows that species assemblages that are distantly related will also be more disparate in terms of their traits, features and the niches they occupy. Yet, studies have found that the total phylogenetic distance

Global variation in the relationship between avian phylogenetic diversity and functional distance. Read More »

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