Bones, Clones, and Biomes
The History and Geography of Recent Neotropical Mammals
Bones, Clones, and Biomes
The History and Geography of Recent Neotropical Mammals
As explorers and scientists have known for decades, the Neotropics harbor a fantastic array of our planet’s mammalian diversity, from capybaras and capuchins to maned wolves and mouse opossums to sloths and sakis. This biological bounty can be attributed partly to the striking diversity of Neotropical landscapes and climates and partly to a series of continental connections that permitted intermittent faunal exchanges with Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and North America. Thus, to comprehend the development of modern Neotropical mammal faunas requires not only mastery of the Neotropics’ substantial diversity, but also knowledge of mammalian lineages and landscapes dating back to the Mesozoic.
Bones, Clones, and Biomes offers just that—an exploration of the development and relationships of the modern mammal fauna through a series of studies that encompass the last 100 million years and both Central and South America. This work serves as a complement to more taxonomically driven works, providing for readers the long geologic and biogeographic contexts that undergird the abundance and diversity of Neotropical mammals. Rather than documenting diversity or distribution, this collection traverses the patterns that the distributions and relationships across mammal species convey, bringing together for the first time geology, paleobiology, systematics, mammalogy, and biogeography. Of critical importance is the book’s utility for current conservation and management programs, part of a rapidly rising conservation paleobiology initiative.
432 pages | 26 halftones, 13 line drawings, 17 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2012
Biological Sciences: Natural History, Paleobiology, Geology, and Paleontology
Reviews
Table of Contents
Bruce D. Patterson and Leonora P. Costa
Part 1. The Geological Setting
2 Punctuated Isolation: The Making and Mixing of South America’s Mammals
Darin A. Croft
3 Origins, Radiations, and Distribution of South American Mammals: From Greenhouse to Icehouse Worlds
Francisco J. Goin, Javier N. Gelfo, Laura Chornogubsky, Michael O. Woodburne, and Thomas Martin
4 Cenozoic Andean Faunas: Shedding New Light on South American Mammal Evolution, Biogeography, Environments, and Tectonics
John J. Flynn, Reynaldo Charrier, Darin A.Croft, and Andre R. Wyss
5 On the Evolution of Large Size in Mammalian Herbivores of Cenozoic Faunas of Southern South America
Sergio F. Vizcaíno, Guillermo H. Cassini, Néstor Toledo, and M. Susana Bargo
6 Evolution of the South American Carnivores (Mammalia, Carnivora): A Paleontological Perspective
Francisco J. Prevosti and Leopoldo H. Soibelzon
7 A Molecular View on the Evolutionary History and Biogeography of Neotropical Carnivores (Mammalia, Carnivora)
Eduardo Eizirik
Part 2. Regional Patterns
8 Hierarchical Organization of Neotropical Mammal Diversity and Its Historical Basis
Sergio Solari, Paúl M. Velazco, and Bruce D. Patterson
9 West Indian Mammals: The Old, the New, and the Recently Extinct
Liliana M. Dávalos and Samuel T. Turvey
10 Biogeography of Central American Mammals: Patterns and Processes
Ana Laura Almendra and Duke S. Rogers
11 Biogeography of Mammals from the Guianas of South America
Burton K. Lim
12 Speciation in Amazonia: Patterns and Predictions of a Network of Hypotheses
Cibele R. Bonvicino and Marcelo Weksler
13 Historical Fragmentation Shaping Vertebrate Diversification in the Atlantic Forest Biodiversity Hotspot
Leonora P. Costa and Yuri L. R. Leite
14 Mammals of the Cerrado and Caatinga: Distribution Patterns of the Tropical Open Biomes of Central South America
Ana Paula Carmignotto, Mario de Vivo, and Alfredo Langguth
15 The Role of the Andes in the Diversification and Biogeography of Neotropical Mammals
Bruce D. Patterson, Sergio Solari, and Paúl M. Velazco
16 Mammalian Biogeography of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego
Enrique P. Lessa, Guillermo D´Elía, and Ulyses F. J. Pardiñas
Contributors
Index
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