European Ocean Biodiversity Information System

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Penguins of Antarctica
Citation
Baker,A.J., Pereira,S.L., Haddrath,O.P. and Edge,K.A. Multiple gene evidence for expansion of extant penguins out of Antarctica due to global cooling. Proc. Biol. Sci. 273 (1582), 11-17 (2006) https://doi.org/10.15468/xxk28e
Contact: Grant, Rachel

Access data
Archived data
Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Description
Classic problems in historical biogeography are where did penguins originate, and why are such mobile birds restricted to the Southern Hemisphere? Competing hypotheses posit they arose in tropical–warm temperate waters, species-diverse cool temperate regions, or in Gondwanaland <100 mya when it was further north. more

To test these hypotheses we constructed a strongly supported phylogeny of extant penguins from 5851 bp of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. Using Bayesian inference of ancestral areas we show that an Antarctic origin of extant taxa is highly likely, and that more derived taxa occur in lower latitudes. Molecular dating estimated penguins originated about 71 million years ago in Gondwanaland when it was further south and cooler. Moreover, extant taxa are inferred to have originated in the Eocene, coincident with the extinction of the larger-bodied fossil taxa as global climate cooled. We hypothesize that, as Antarctica became ice-encrusted, modern penguins expanded via the circumpolar current to oceanic islands within the Antarctic Convergence, and later to the southern continents. Thus, global cooling has had a major impact on penguin evolution, as it has on vertebrates generally. Penguins only reached cooler tropical waters in the Galapagos about 4 mya, and have not crossed the equatorial thermal barrier.

Scope
Themes:
Biology > Birds
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal, Terrestrial, Data, DNA, DNA barcodes, Marine Genomics, Penguins, Antarctica, Spheniscidae Bonaparte, 1831

Geographical coverage
Antarctica [Marine Regions]

Temporal coverage
2006
Unknown

Taxonomic coverage
Spheniscidae Bonaparte, 1831 [WoRMS]

Parameters
Molecular data
Occurrence of biota

Contributor
Natural Environment Research Council; British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
Grant, Rachel

Related datasets
Published in:
AntOBIS: Antarctic Ocean Biodiversity Information System
(Partly) included in:
RAS: Register of Antarctic Species

Publication
Based on this dataset
Baker, A.J. et al. (2006). Multiple gene evidence for expansion of extant penguins out of Antarctica due to global cooling. Proc. - Royal Soc., Biol. Sci. 273(1582): 11-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3260

Dataset status: Completed
Data type: Data
Data origin: Literature research
Metadatarecord created: 2010-03-25
Information last updated: 2019-04-10
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