In the journal Ecology: A publication of the Ecological Society of America, Anne Blach-Overgaard and other ecologists part of the Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity Group in Aarhus, Denmark published an article titled: “Multimillion-year climatic effects on palm species diversity in Africa.” The article demonstrates that the species diversity and richness of the palm species from tropical, subtropical and dry-tropical climates throughout Africa are deeply influenced by historical climatic patterns that runs deeper than previously expected. By obtaining continent-scale data on precipitation, temperature and species richness from the late Miocene period (~10 mya), the Pliocene (~3 mya) and the Last Glacial Maximum (0.021 mya), the results show that climate change affects diversity patterns over multimillion-year “historical legacies” that extended farther back in the geological time scale than previously expected. The article uses a combination of acts, behavior, or events and reports of acts, behavior, or events data to conduct their analysis due to the combination of historical records on the species and data directly surveyed by the ecologists. The data was obtained from public and privates records, as well as detached observation of the species patterns and species distribution modeling created by the authors for this study. Statistical analysis for this study consisted of calculating bivariate correlations between the response variables (species richness) and the potential predictors (temperature and precipitation). A second multivariate analysis was conducted to compare the categorized response variables of total species richness, rain forest species richness and open-habitat species richness. The results included beautiful maps of Africa showing the data collection that easily identify the patterns with intriguing results about how far back climatic changes can affect an entire family of plants. I was initially curious about why the authors chose the palm family (Arecaceae), but they article quickly answered my question by addressing that they are keystone species for tropical and subtropical regions. It just goes to show that what anthropocentric changes to climate we cause today will affect species distribution on the planet for millions of years.

Blach-Overgaard, A., Kissling, W., Dransfield, J., Balslev, H., & Svenning, J. (2013). Multimillion-year climatic effects on palm species diversity in Africa. Ecology, 94(11), 2426-2435. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23597204