Current project

Community phylogeny and phylogeography of Mediterranean amphibians

Our knowledge of the geological history of the Mediterranean region, and namely of its western part surrounding the Alboran and the Tyrrhenian Seas, is without comparison. Therefore, its reconstruction since the beginning of the Cenozoic, ca. 65 million years ago (mya), offers biogeographers a multitude of opportunities for inferring dated molecular phylogenies.

Amphibians are especially suitable for vicariance biogeography since transmarine dispersal is rare in these physiologically highly sensible organisms. Currently published phylogenies identified more than 200 independent evolutionary lineages of Mediterranean and western Palearctic amphibians. We include all of them in a joint analyses to infer a unifying dated evolutionary scenario. This will also allow us to quantify the amount of evolutionary scenarios for single taxa which were wrongly dated due to the application of local molecular clocks.

Funding: 

  • Graduate school 1319 of the German Research Foundation.

Partners:

  • Prof. Dr. Miguel Vences, Braunschweig University, Zoology Department.

Please contact: 

“Snapshot” of a spatio-temporal scenario of Lyciasalamandra evolution in southern Anatolia (small photo: Lyciasalamandra fazilae © Bayram Göҫmen).