Phylogenetic diversification and climate change in the Cenozoic

The ability of lineages to adapt to changing environmental conditions crucially depends on changes of the species' ecological niche, but little is known about the triggers and rates of these changes. The aim of this project is to understand how species' ecological niches evolve across spatial and temporal scales. We combine phylogenetic and biogeographic information for different groups of organisms (plants and animals) with climatic data and develop new analyses tools to assess whether climate change has been a major driver of diversification in the Cenozoic. Datasets include dated species-level molecular phylogenetic reconstructions based on DNA sequences from several plastid and nuclear regions as well as high-resolution georeferenced distribution data and information on various ecological traits. Analyses focus on the assessment of diversification rates, species distribution modeling, and phylogenetic reconstructions of ancestral climatic niches. Temporal coverage: Cenozoic