The forests of tropical South America host some of the highest biodiversity on Earth. In this project, funded by a 5-year award from the NSF Frontiers in Earth Systems Dynamics program, an interdisciplinary team of geologists, climatologists, and biologists are taking advantage of recent advances in their respective disciplines to develop an integrated understanding of how climate and geology interact to shape the distribution and generation of biodiversity in the Amazon/Andean forests through time. By deciphering how environment affects biodiversity and, conversely, how genetic sequences of plant species encode the history of the physical environment, it is envisioned that molecular phylogenetics will inform geological history, much like paleontology informs stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental interpretation, and the new field of “geo-genomics” will emerge.
Check out project news on our Facebook page: link