Evolution and biogeography of seagrasses

Larkum, AWD; Waycott, M; Conran, JG

Evolution and biogeography of seagrasses

Larkum, AWD

Waycott, M Conran, JG

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Publication Type:: Chapter
Citation:: Seagrasses of Australia: Structure, Ecology and Conservation, 2018, pp. 3 - 29
Issue Date:: 2018-07-27

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Larkum, AWD https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0420-134X	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Waycott, M	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Conran, JG	en_US
dc.date.issued	2018-07-27	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Seagrasses of Australia: Structure, Ecology and Conservation, 2018, pp. 3 - 29	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9783319713526	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/133554
dc.description.abstract	© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. Seagrasses are an organismal biological group united by their ability to grow in marine environments. As marine flowering plants they have evolved a combined suite of adaptations multiple times enabling the four known lineages containing species of seagrass to survive, and thrive, in the sea. Unlike many other biological groups of plants however, seagrasses are all derived from a single order of flowering plants, the Alismatales. This order, being derived early in the evolution of the monocotyledons, is comprised predominantly of aquatic plants, of all forms- emergent, submerged, freshwater, estuarine and marine. A review of seagrass fossils suggests that new discoveries of seagrass fossils along with confirmation of some earlier finds lead to a clear signal that some seagrass species had a wider distribution in the past compared with today. The discovery of new fossil sites should be encouraged as this will likely produce important valuable information on the evolution of this group. In general the biogeography of seagrasses suggests that these organisms evolved successfully in the Tethys Sea of the Late Cretaceous. However, the modern division into two groups, temperate and tropical tends to suggest that at some point an ecological separation occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. There are a disproportionately large number of temperate seagrass species in southern Australia and there is significant endemism shown in Posidonia, Amphibolis and a unique species of Halophila (H. australis). The use of genetic and genomic techniques has begun to explain these distributions but we can expect a much bigger picture to emerge in the near future.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Seagrasses of Australia: Structure, Ecology and Conservation	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1007/978-3-319-71354-0_1	en_US
dc.title	Evolution and biogeography of seagrasses	en_US
dc.type	Chapter
utslib.for	0603 Evolutionary Biology	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Science
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US

Abstract:

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. Seagrasses are an organismal biological group united by their ability to grow in marine environments. As marine flowering plants they have evolved a combined suite of adaptations multiple times enabling the four known lineages containing species of seagrass to survive, and thrive, in the sea. Unlike many other biological groups of plants however, seagrasses are all derived from a single order of flowering plants, the Alismatales. This order, being derived early in the evolution of the monocotyledons, is comprised predominantly of aquatic plants, of all forms- emergent, submerged, freshwater, estuarine and marine. A review of seagrass fossils suggests that new discoveries of seagrass fossils along with confirmation of some earlier finds lead to a clear signal that some seagrass species had a wider distribution in the past compared with today. The discovery of new fossil sites should be encouraged as this will likely produce important valuable information on the evolution of this group. In general the biogeography of seagrasses suggests that these organisms evolved successfully in the Tethys Sea of the Late Cretaceous. However, the modern division into two groups, temperate and tropical tends to suggest that at some point an ecological separation occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. There are a disproportionately large number of temperate seagrass species in southern Australia and there is significant endemism shown in Posidonia, Amphibolis and a unique species of Halophila (H. australis). The use of genetic and genomic techniques has begun to explain these distributions but we can expect a much bigger picture to emerge in the near future.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/133554