ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
The rise of angiosperms pushed conifers to decline during global cooling.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 57 papers.
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57 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Environmental phylogenetics supports a steady diversification of crown eukaryotes starting from the mid-Proterozoic.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Leaf Size in Conifers: Global Associations With Climate and Evolutionary History.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Ecological change may be a common initiator of evolutionary pollinator shifts.The New phytologist · 2026Review
- Photosynthesis under far-red light-evolutionary adaptations and bioengineering of light-harvesting complexes.FEBS letters · 2026Review
- Causes of delayed angiosperm diversification: The photosynthetic revolution, increased opportunity costs of anti-herbivore defenses, selection for qualitative toxins, and acceleration of plant-herbivore coevolution.American journal of botany · 2025Review
- The stepwise rise of angiosperm-dominated terrestrial ecosystems.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Evolutionary implications of a deep-time perspective on insect pollination.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- New fossils imply a deeper origin of modern birds in the Mesozoic.National science review · 2025Review
- Can Macroevolution Inform Contemporary Extinction Risk?Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Comparative transcriptomics in ferns reveals key innovations and divergent evolution of the secondary cell walls.Nature plants · 2025Article
- Evolution of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- New insights on angiosperm crown age based on Bayesian node dating and skyline fossilized birth-death approaches.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Diversification and extinction of Hemiptera in deep time.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Ecological change and conflict reduction led to a social circulatory system in ants.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Plastome data provides new insights into population differentiation and evolution of Ginkgo in the Sichuan Basin of China.BMC plant biology · 2025Article
- Chromosome-level baobab genome illuminates its evolutionary trajectory and environmental adaptation.Nature communications · 2024Article
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Abstract
Competition among species and entire clades can impact species diversification and extinction, which can shape macroevolutionary patterns. The fossil record shows successive biotic turnovers such that a dominant group is replaced by another. One striking example involves the decline of gymnosperms and the rapid diversification and ecological dominance of angiosperms in the Cretaceous. It is generally believed that angiosperms outcompeted gymnosperms, but the macroevolutionary processes and alternative drivers explaining this pattern remain elusive. Using extant time trees and vetted fossil occurrences for conifers, we tested the hypotheses that clade competition or climate change led to the decline of conifers at the expense of angiosperms. Here, we find that both fossil and molecular data show high congruence in revealing 1) low diversification rates, punctuated by speciation pulses, during warming events throughout the Phanerozoic and 2) that conifer extinction increased significantly in the Mid-Cretaceous (100 to 110 Ma) and remained high ever since. Their extinction rates are best explained by the rise of angiosperms, rejecting alternative models based on either climate change or time alone. Our results support the hypothesis of an active clade replacement, implying that direct competition with angiosperms increased the extinction of conifers by pushing their remaining species diversity and dominance out of the warm tropics. This study illustrates how entire branches on the Tree of Life may actively compete for ecological dominance under changing climates.
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