Rising from the Ashes: The Biogeographic Origins of Modern Coral Reef Fishes

Cantalice, Kleyton M., Alvarado-Ortega, Jesús, Bellwood, David R., and Siqueira, Alexandre C. (2022) Rising from the Ashes: The Biogeographic Origins of Modern Coral Reef Fishes. BioScience, 72 (8). pp. 769-777.

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Abstract

During the excavation of Mayan tombs, little did the archaeologists know that the fossils they discovered in the tomb stones would fundamentally alter our understanding of the earliest origins of coral reef fishes. Located just 500 kilometers from the point where an asteroid impact reconfigured the world's biological systems 66 million years ago, we find the earliest origins of three typical reef fish groups. Their presence in Mexico just 3 million years after this impact finally reconciles the conflict between the fossil and phylogenetic evidence for the earliest origins of reef fishes. The incorporation of these fossils into a global reconstruction of fish evolutionary history reveals a new picture of the early biogeography of reef fishes, with strong Atlantic links. From locations associated with biological destruction and societal collapse, we see evidence of the origins of one of the world's most diverse and spectacular marine ecosystems: coral reefs.

Item ID: 75638
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1525-3244
Keywords: coral reef fishes, evolutionary biogeography, the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, asteroid impact, Mexico
Copyright Information: © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Funders: Australian Research Council (ARC)
Projects and Grants: ARC LF190100062
Date Deposited: 03 Aug 2022 09:48
FoR Codes: 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3104 Evolutionary biology > 310402 Biogeography and phylogeography @ 100%
SEO Codes: 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 100%
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