February 8 2024 – 13h: international seminar Palevoprim n° 50
Speaker
Loredana Macaluso
Postdoctol fellow, Natural Sciences Collections, Université Martin Luther Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
Topic
The puzzling biogeographic history of salamanders: what does the fossil record tell us?
Nearly all the present-day diversity of caudates is concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, with a small number of species endemic to South America and southeast Asia. Several families of this group show a disjunct geographical range spanning North America and Eurasia (e.g. Plethodontidae, Proteidae and Salamandridae).
These distributional patterns point to a complex evolutionary and biogeographic history that cannot be disentangled by considering only the present-day distribution of caudate biodiversity, which represents only a temporal snapshot that has been overprinted by extirpations and anthropogenic disturbances. In this seminar, Dr. Macaluso will illustrate how the fossil record can help us reconstructing the paleobiogeography of the group and what is the state of the art of our current knowledge.
Place
Salle 410, bât. B35 (3ème étage, aile nord), université de Poitiers.