ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
A global phylogeny of turtles reveals a burst of climate-associated diversification on continental margins.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
76 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Changes in phenology mediate vertebrate population responses to temperature globally.Nature communications · 2026Pooled it
- The cranial, mandibular, and hyoid anatomy of softshell turtles (Trionychidae): A revised character list for phylogenetic analysis.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Estimating Divergence Times and Diversification Rates with the Unresolved Fossilized Birth-Death Process.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A Review of the Effects of Freshwater Habitat Quality on Aquatic & Semi-Aquatic Turtles.Ecology and evolution · 2026Review
- The genomic basis of independent marine transitions in turtles: convergent episodic adaptation and demographic shifts.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Article
- Regulatory diversification of conservedZoological research · 2026Article
- Which turtle should I study? Uneven distribution of research effort across Testudines species.PloS one · 2026Article
- Species Identification of Sea Turtles in Thailand Using DNA Barcoding Coupled With High-Resolution Melting (Bar-HRM) Analysis.Scientifica · 2026Article
- Cladistic Relationships and Landscape Genetics of the Endangered Indian Peacock Softshell TurtleEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Lineages to landscapes: mitogenomic insights and climate refugia informing proactive conservation of the endangered Tricarinate Hill Turtle (Melanochelys tricarinata) in the Indian subcontinent.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Quaternary Habitat Fluctuations and Demographic Dynamics in Turtles Inferred From Environmental Niche Modelling and Whole Genome Data.Molecular ecology resources · 2025Article
- Evolvability in vertebrate segmentation.Seminars in cell & developmental biology · 2025Review
- Taxonomic revision of the critically endangered big-headed turtles (Reptilia: Testudines: Platysternidae Gray, 1869), with description of a new species.Zoological research · 2025Article
- Neonatal state and degree of necessity for parental care in Maiasaura based on inferred neonatal metabolic rates.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Variation and development of the turtle chondrocranium, with a description of the common musk turtle (Sternotherus odoratus, Kinosternidae, Cryptodira, Testudines).Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2025Article
- Unveiling the Evolutionary Lineages and Habitat Dynamics of the Monotypic Crowned River TurtleEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- A longitudinal analysis of function annotations of the human proteome reveals consistently high biases.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2025Article
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
Living turtles are characterized by extraordinarily low species diversity given their age. The clade's extensive fossil record indicates that climate and biogeography may have played important roles in determining their diversity. We investigated this hypothesis by collecting a molecular dataset for 591 individual turtles that, together, represent 80% of all turtle species, including representatives of all families and 98% of genera, and used it to jointly estimate phylogeny and divergence times. We found that the turtle tree is characterized by relatively constant diversification (speciation minus extinction) punctuated by a single threefold increase. We also found that this shift is temporally and geographically associated with newly emerged continental margins that appeared during the Eocene-Oligocene transition about 30 million years before present. In apparent contrast, the fossil record from this time period contains evidence for a major, but regional, extinction event. These seemingly discordant findings appear to be driven by a common global process: global cooling and drying at the time of the Eocene-Oligocene transition. This climatic shift led to aridification that drove extinctions in important fossil-bearing areas, while simultaneously exposing new continental margin habitat that subsequently allowed for a burst of speciation associated with these newly exploitable ecological opportunities.
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