ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2018
To adapt or go extinct? The fate of megafaunal palm fruits under past global change.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Climate modulation of phylogenetic and functional constraints on fruit volume: A case study of Chinese angiosperms.Plant diversity · 2026Article
- Legacy of the Lost and Pressure of the Present: Malagasy Plant Seeds Retain Megafauna Dispersal Signatures but Downsize Under Human Pressure.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Evolutionary age correlates with range size across plants and animals.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Fossil evidence of proboscidean frugivory and its lasting impact on South American ecosystems.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Dispersal-diversity feedbacks and their consequences for macroecological patterns.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Sequential diversification with Miocene extinction and Pliocene speciation linked to mountain uplift explains the diversity of the African rain forest clade Monodoreae (Annonaceae).Annals of botany · 2024Article
- The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2024Review
- Bearing Fruit: Miocene Apes and Rosaceous Fruit Evolution.Biological theory · 2023Article
- A phylogenetic study to assess the link between biome specialization and diversification in swallowtail butterflies.Global change biology · 2022Article
- The megaherbivore gap after the non-avian dinosaur extinctions modified trait evolution and diversification of tropical palms.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Plastome structure, phylogenomic analyses and molecular dating of Arecaceae.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- In situ radiation explains the frequency of dioecious palms on islands.Annals of botany · 2021Article
- Seed dispersers shape the pulp nutrients of fleshy-fruited plants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Molecular Control of Oil Metabolism in the Endosperm of Seeds.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication.Frontiers in plant science · 2021Article
- Higher evolutionary rates in life-history traits in insular than in mainland palms.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- On the origin of giant seeds: the macroevolution of the double coconut (Lodoicea maldivica) and its relatives (Borasseae, Arecaceae).The New phytologist · 2020Article
- Climate change winners and losers: The effects of climate change on five palm species in the Southeastern United States.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Frugivore-fruit size relationships between palms and mammals reveal past and future defaunation impacts.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Diversification in evolutionary arenas-Assessment and synthesis.Ecology and evolution · 2020Review
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7 authors.
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Abstract
Past global change may have forced animal-dispersed plants with megafaunal fruits to adapt or go extinct, but these processes have remained unexplored at broad spatio-temporal scales. Here, we combine phylogenetic, distributional and fruit size data for more than 2500 palm (Arecaceae) species in a time-slice diversification analysis to quantify how extinction and adaptation have changed over deep time. Our results indicate that extinction rates of palms with megafaunal fruits have increased in the New World since the onset of the Quaternary (2.6 million years ago). In contrast, Old World palms show a Quaternary increase in transition rates towards evolving small fruits from megafaunal fruits. We suggest that Quaternary climate oscillations and concurrent habitat fragmentation and defaunation of megafaunal frugivores in the New World have reduced seed dispersal distances and geographical ranges of palms with megafaunal fruits, resulting in their extinction. The increasing adaptation to smaller fruits in the Old World could reflect selection for seed dispersal by ocean-crossing frugivores (e.g. medium-sized birds and bats) to colonize Indo-Pacific islands against a background of Quaternary sea-level fluctuations. Our macro-evolutionary results suggest that megafaunal fruits are increasingly being lost from tropical ecosystems, either due to extinctions or by adapting to smaller fruit sizes.
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