Abstract
Biodiversity today has the unusual property that 85% of plant and animal species live on land rather than in the sea, and half of these live in tropical rainforests. An explosive boost to terrestrial diversity occurred from c. 100-50 million years ago, the Late Cretaceous and early Palaeogene. During this interval, the Earth-life system on land was reset, and the biosphere expanded to a new level of productivity, enhancing the capacity and species diversity of terrestrial environments. This boost in terrestrial biodiversity coincided with innovations in flowering plant biology and evolutionary ecology, including their flowers and efficiencies in reproduction; coevolution with animals, especially pollinators and herbivores; photosynthetic capacities; adaptability; and ability to modify habitats. The rise of angiosperms triggered a macroecological revolution on land and drove modern biodiversity in a secular, prolonged shift to new, high levels, a series of processes we name here the Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | The New phytologist |
| Early online date | 26 Oct 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 16 Nov 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Kevin Boyce, Harald Schneider, Santiago Ramírez‐Barahona, and Brian Atkinson for very helpful discussions, Catherine Wardrop and Rebecca Horwitt for drafting images (Figs 3 , 5 ), Fabien Condamine and Christopher Scotese for materials used in drafting Fig. 3 , Susana Magallón for use of angiosperm images by Albino Luna, Instituto de Biologia, UNAM (Fig. 1 ), and Fabiany Herrera for the fossil legume image (Fig. 5a ). We thank Peter Crane, Conrad Labandeira, Susanne Renner, and two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments. Thanks also to Chenyang Cai for discussions about Cretaceous insects. We acknowledge funding from ERC grant no. 788203 and NERC grants NE/1027630/1 and NE/P013724/1 to MJB, and NSF grants EAR‐1925755 and DEB‐1556666 to PW.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2021 New Phytologist Foundation.
Access to Document
- Full-text PDF (final published version)
This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Wiley at https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17822 . Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.