Biogeografía y evolución de campanuláceas y geraniáceas en biomas áridos y mediterráneos de África
- Autores: Sara García Aloy
- Directores de la Tesis: Maria Luisa Alarcon Cavero (dir. tes.), Cristina Roquet Ruiz (dir. tes.), Juan José Aldasoro (dir. tes.), Llorenç Sáez Gonyalons (tut. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2017
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Teresa Garnatje i Roca (presid.), Alfredo García Fernández (secret.), Oriane Hidalgo Grani (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Biología y Biotecnología Vegetal por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
- Resumen
Africa harbours two of the richest regions in plant species of our planet: the Cape Floristic Region and the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. This PhD project aims to shed new light on the African biodiversity evolution, which remains poorly studied to date despite its high species richness. Moreover, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the evolutionary processes that took place within the flora of the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, which has been much less investigated than the northern one.
Specifically, we studied the diversification processes occurring within Africa, as well as the dispersal patterns between this continent and adjacent zones, with special emphasis on arid and Mediterranean biomes. In order to accomplish these objectives, we focused on two families of vascular plants, Campanulaceae and Geraniaceae. These families inhabit all the continents except Antarctica, but their distribution centres are located in the Mediterranean climatic regions. We investigated both families from a macroevolutionary and a microevolutionary point of view to gain understanding on the processes of diversification, colonisation and adaptation they experienced in Africa.
Our first case study aimed to unravel the diversification and biogeographic history of the family Geraniaceae, and investigated how fruit evolution could have promoted the expansion of Geraniaceae to different environments and biogeographic regions. In the second case study, we focused on the genus Monsonia (Geraniaceae), which is an almost exclusively African lineage adapted to arid and Mediterranean environments. In this work, we investigated the evolution of the ecological niche and morphological traits that could have influenced the diversification of the genus and its biogeographic history. The third case study aimed to disentangle the evolutionary origins and the biogeographic history of the Azorina-group, a lineage of Campanula (Campanulaceae) mainly distributed in North Africa and Macaronesia. The main aim of this study was to identify the dispersal corridors within Africa at a macroevolutionary scale, and to unravel which areas constituted refugia during unfavourable climatic periods. Finally, we conducted a fourth work focusing also in the Azorina-group; in this case we conducted a microevolutionary study that zoomed in the lineage that comprises the species Campanula kremeri (distributed in north Africa and the south of the Iberian Peninsula) and Campanula occidentalis (endemic to the Canary islands) with the aim to investigate the biogeographic connections between the floras of these regions in recent times.
