The island of Sri Lanka’s exceptional biodiversity and enigmatic biogeography begs investigation, as the island is key in understanding the evolution of the Asian tropical flora. Since the Jurassic, Sri Lanka has been subjected to remarkable tectonic changes, thus its flora could have been influenced by that of a number of nearby landmasses, as well giving Sri Lanka the potential to have played a wider role in the assemblage of floras elsewhere. Firstly, as Sri Lanka originated as a fragment of the supercontinent Gondwana, part of its flora may contain Gondwanan relict lineages. There is also the potential for immigration from Laurasia after the Deccan Plate collided with it 45-50 Mya. Further, Sri Lanka may harbour floristic elements from nearby land masses such as Africa and Southeast Asia as a result of long distance dispersals, and in situ speciation has the potential to have played an important role in enhancing the endemic Sri Lankan flora. I tested the relative contributions of the above hypotheses for the possible origins of the Sri Lankan flora using three representative families, Begoniaceae, Sapotaceae and Zingiberaceae. These families represent both herbaceous and woody elements, and have high diversity across the tropics. Dated molecular phylogenies were constructed for each family. I used recent analytical developments in geographic range evolution modelling and ancestral area reconstruction, incorporating a parameter J to test for founder event speciation. A fine scale area coding was used in order to obtain a better picture of the biogeography of continental Asia. Amongst all the models compared, a dispersal-extinction cladogenesis model incorporating founder event speciation proved to be the best fit for the data for all three families. The dates of origin for Sri Lankan lineages considerably post-date the Gondwanan break up, instead suggesting a geologically more recent entry followed by diversification of endemics within the island. The majority of Sri Lankan lineages have an origin in the Sunda Shelf (53%). Persistence of warm temperate and perhumid climate conditions in southwestern Sri Lanka resembling those of Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra could have facilitated suitable habitats for these massive dispersals from the Sunda Shelf region. Some trans-oceanic long distance dispersals from Africa (11%) are also evidenced, again these are too young to accept a hypothesis of dispersal during the Deccan Plate’s migration close to the African coast during the late Cretaceous, but occurred later during the Miocene. Further, some lineages of Laurasian origin (20%) are evidenced in the Zingiberaceae with ancestral areas of China and Indochina, which is congruent with a post collision invasion. Among the families tested, dispersals have occurred stochastically, one during the Eocene, six during the Oligocene, seven during the Miocene, two during the Pliocene and one during the Pleistocene. The highest number of dispersals occurred during the Miocene when a warm climate was prevailing during the Miocene thermal maximum. My results confirm that in situ speciation is an important contributor to the Sri Lankan flora. More rapid radiation of endemics has occurred during Pliocene-Pleistocene; two endemics in Begoniaceae, ten endemics in Sapotaceae and ten endemics in Zingiberaceae have evolved in situ during this period. Sri Lanka will have been subjected to expansion and contraction of climatic and vegetation zones within the island during glacial and interglacial periods, potentially resulting in allopatric speciation. As a conclusion, long distance dispersals have played a prominent role in the evolution of the Sri Lankan flora. The young ages challenge the vicariant paradigm for the origin and current disjunct distributions of the world’s tropical lineages and provide strong evidence for a youthful tropics at the species level. The thesis contains six chapters; first two are introductory chapters, then there are three analytical chapters, one for each family, and finally a summary chapter is provided. Each analytical chapter is written as a stand-alone scientific publication, thus there is some repetition of relevant content in each.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:743633 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Kumarage, Lakmini Darshika |
| Contributors | Milne, Richard ; Richardson, James |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29550 |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds