Comparative biogeography: innovations and the rise to dominance of the North Pacific biota

• Main Author: Vermeij, Geerat J
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 2018
• Subjects: Life Below Water; Aquatic Organisms; Biological Evolution; Fossils; Pacific Ocean; Phylogeny; innovation; biogeography; North Pacific; faunal dominance; Caenozoic; Biological Sciences; Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences; Medical and Health Sciences; Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0xv9h6m1

The North Pacific is the largest cold-water source of lineages spreading to other modern marine temperate biotas. How this status was achieved remains unclear. One hypothesis is that functional innovations of large effect, defined as departures from the norm in temperate clades and which confer competitive or defensive benefits, increase resource availability, and raise performance standards in the biota as a whole, evolved earlier and more frequently in the North Pacific than elsewhere in the temperate zone. In support of this hypothesis, phylogenetic and fossil evidence reveals 47 temperate marine innovations beginning in the latest Eocene, of which half arose in the North Pacific. Of the 22 innovations of large effect, 13 (39%) evolved in the North Pacific, including basal growth in kelps and bottom-feeding herbivory and durophagy in mammals. Temperate innovations in the Southern Hemisphere and the North Atlantic appeared later and were less consequential. Most other innovations arose in refuges where the risks of predation and competition are low. Among temperate marine biotas, the North Pacific has the highest incidence of unique innovations and the earliest origins of major breakthroughs, five of which spread elsewhere.