Although global warming is currently threatening biodiversity, we know from past records that cooling periods can also be disastrous in terms of extinction rates. During the Eocene, about 50 million years ago, the Earth was so warm that there were no permanent ice caps in the poles, and warm-loving subtropical species thrived at quite high latitudes.
Climate on Earth has always been changing. Despite decades of investigation, our limited knowledge of the ecological and evolutionary effects of climate changes often translates into uncertain predictions about the impact of future climates on …
Microsatellite primers were developed for the evergreen tree Laurus to investigate population genetic structure and patterns of gene flow via animal-dispersed pollen and seeds. Twenty polymorphic nuclear microsatellite markers were developed using …
The post-glacial range dynamics of many European plant species have been widely investigated, but information rapidly diminishes as one moves further back in time. Here we infer the historical range shifts of Laurus, a paradigmatic tree of the …
Climate changes are thought to be responsible for the retreat and eventual extinction of subtropical lauroid species that covered much of Europe and North Africa during the Palaeogene and early Neogene; little is known, however, of the spatial and …