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Science 21 September 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5538, pp. 2214 - 2216
DOI: 10.1126/science.1065310
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Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives

ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION:
Enhanced: The Inga--Newcomer or Museum Antiquity?

Eldredge Bermingham and Christopher Dick

The lowland rainforests of the neotropics contain a remarkable diversity of plant and animal species. But is this diversity due to the age and climatic stability of tropical forest regions (museum hypothesis) or to their complexity, which promotes speciation (cradle of diversity hypothesis)? In a Perspective, Bermingham and Dick elegantly discuss a molecular phylogenetics study of the tropical rain forest genus Inga (Richardson et al.). The results of this study suggest that at least in the case of this genus, speciation was rapid and recent, occurring between 3 and 6 million years ago.

The authors are with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 2072, Balboa, Republic of Panama. E-mail: eb{at}naos.si.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
From the Cover: Tropical forests are both evolutionary cradles and museums of leaf beetle diversity.
D. D. McKenna and B. D. Farrell (2006)
PNAS 103, 10947-10951
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)