Historical Biogeography of Neotropical Freshwater Fishes / Edition 1

by James S. Albert, Roberto Reis

Overview

The fish faunas of continental South and Central America constitute one of the greatest concentrations of aquatic diversity on Earth, consisting of about 10 percent of all living vertebrate species. Historical Biogeography of Neotropical Freshwater Fishes explores the evolutionary origins of this unique ecosystem. The chapters address central themes in the study of tropical biodiversity: why is the Amazon basin home to so many distinct evolutionary lineages? What roles do ecological specialization, speciation, and extinction play in the formation of regional assemblages? How do dispersal barriers contribute to isolation and diversification? Focusing on whole faunas rather than individual taxonomic groups, this volume shows that the area’s high regional diversity is not the result of recent diversification in lowland tropical rainforests. Rather, it is the product of species accumulating over tens of millions of years and across a continental arena.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520268685
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/08/2011
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

James S. Albert is Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. Roberto E. Reis is Professor of Biology at the Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

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Historical Biogeography of Neotropical Freshwater Fishes

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By James S. Albert, Roberto E. Reis

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2011 the Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-26868-5

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Neotropical Freshwaters

JAMES S. ALBERT and ROBERTO E. REIS

The Neotropical Region ... comprehending not only South America but Tropical North America and the Antilles ... is distinguished from all the other great zoological divisions of the globe, by the small proportion of its surface occupied by deserts, by the large proportion of its lowlands, and by the altogether unequalled extent and luxuriance of its tropical forests. It further possesses a grand mountain range, rivaling the Himalayas in altitude and far surpassing them in extent, and which, being wholly situated within the region and running through eighty degrees of latitude, offers a variety of conditions and an extent of mountain slopes, of lofty plateaus and of deep valleys, which no other tropical region can approach.

WALLACE 1876, 3

In this paragraph introducing the Neotropics as a distinct biogeographical region of the world, Alfred Russel Wallace captured all the essential elements of its remarkable and highly endemic biota. The rivers and streams of tropical South and Central America are exceptionally diverse, with current estimates for freshwater fishes exceeding 7,000 species, making it by far the most species-rich continental vertebrate fauna on earth (Lundberg et al. 2000; Berra 2001; Reis et al. 2003a; Lévêque et al. 2005; Lévêque et al. 2008; Petry 2008). To put this number in perspective, Neotropical freshwater fishes represent about one in five of the world's fish species, or perhaps 10% of all vertebrate species (Vari and Malabarba 1998; Figure 1.1). Any complete understanding of vertebrate evolution must therefore account for the spectacular diversification of fishes in the Amazon Basin and adjacent regions.

Understanding the historical origins of this singular fauna has been a challenge for generations of evolutionary biologists. Yet only in the past two decades has the community of Neotropical ichthyologists come to comprehend the great antiquity of the lineages that constitute the fauna (Lundberg 1998; Malabarba et al. 1998; Reis et al. 2003a). This period has seen a rapid proliferation of phylogenetic studies on Neotropical fishes, often at the species level, and covering most of the major clades (see Chapters 5 and 7). One important conclusion that has emerged during this period of research, from detailed species-level phylogenetic and biogeographic studies, is that with few exceptions the evolutionary diversification of Neotropical fishes occurred over periods of tens of millions of years, and over a continental arena (Weitzman and Weitzman 1982; Vari 1988; Lundberg 1998). In other words, most evolving clades of Amazonian fishes (e.g., species-groups or genera) are not restricted to a single river basin, and are often distributed throughout wide areas of tropical South America (e.g., Schaefer 1997; Albert et al. 2004; Shimabukuro-Dias et al. 2004; Hulen et al. 2005; Reis and Borges 2006; Armbruster 2008). Further, the great antiquity of Amazonian fish lineages reflects that of the ecosystem as a whole, dating to the early Cenozoic and Cretaceous (Jaramillo 2002; Burnham and Johnson 2004; Jaramillo et al. 2006).

Considering the broad range of spatial and temporal scales involved, a thorough understanding of the origins of a continental biota requires information and ideas from many scientific disciplines. Advances in the study of Neotropical biodiversity have been profoundly affected during the past two decades by many new findings bearing directly on phylogenetic, paleoclimatic, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. The discovery of new fossils has extended our knowledge of the temporal context for diversification (e.g., (Lundberg and Chernoff 1992; Casciotta and Arratia 1993; Gayet 2001; Gayet et al. 2002; Gayet and Meunier 2003; Lundberg and Aguilera 2003; Lundberg 2005; Sanchez-Villagra and Aguilera 2006; M. Malabarba and Lundberg 2007; Sabaj-Perez et al. 2007; M. Malabarba and Malabarba 2008, 2010). New geological data bearing on paleoclimates and paleoenvironments have opened new perspectives on the conditions under which diversification occurred (e.g., Hoorn 1994a; Hoorn et al. 1995; Räsänen et al. 1995; Hoorn 2006c; Kaandorp et al. 2006; Wesselingh and Salo 2006; Hovikoski, Räsänen, et al. 2007).

It is not excessive to say these recent findings from the earth sciences have revolutionized understanding of the temporal context and paleogeographic circumstances for the diversification of Neotropical fishes (Lundberg 1998). These studies introduced a variety of new concepts into the working daily vocabulary of systematic ichthyologists, including Neogene orogenies, marine incursions, and the Lago Pebas mega-wetland system (see, e.g., Montoya-Burgos 2003; Albert, Lovejoy, et al. 2006; Hardman and Lundberg 2006; Lovejoy et al. 2006; Ribeiro 2006). Among the most infl uential of these concepts has been the relatively recent (Miocene) time frame for the assembly of the modern Amazon and Orinoco hydrogeographic basins (see Chapter 3). From these geologically oriented findings a new perspective has emerged, in which the great river basins of South America are seen as relatively young as compared with the age of the lineages of fishes that inhabit them. In hindsight such a shift in perspective seems inevitable, as part of the general movement in biodiversity studies to appreciate the importance of how past is a key to understanding the present (Reaka-Kudla and Wilson 1997; Ricklefs 2002).

Geological Features

The large-scale (~106-7 km2) geological structures of the Neotropics described by Wallace (1876) define the region as a whole and have guided the evolution of individual river basins (Figure 1.2). The main structures are the South American Platform (including the Guiana and Brazilian shields and Amazon Craton), the Southern, Central, and Northern portions of the Andes, the Sub-Andean Foreland, and the Nuclear and Southern portions of Central America (Veblen et al. 2007). These geophysical structures have directed the flow of water and sediments across the continental interior for greater than 120 Ma, constraining the watersheds of the interstructural drainage axes throughout the whole period during which Neotropical fishes evolved. The origins of some structures may be traced to or before the Lower Cretaceous, having been present throughout the entire evolutionary history of the Neotropical aquatic taxa (e.g., the Paraná Basin and other shield drainages; K. Cox 1989; Ribeiro 2006). Other structures are much younger, having first emerged in the Neogene (e.g., portions of the Northern Andes and Southern Central America). The principal drainage axes of the continent lie within the geological depressions between the Guiana and Brazilian shields and between the shields and the Andes. On the modern landscape these are the Orinoco, Amazon, and Paraná-Paraguay basins (Figure 1.3), which assumed their modern configurations during the Neogene. Many of the other major drainages of modern South America developed in the Cretaceous (Potter 1997), during or before the final separation from Africa c. 98–93 Ma (Thomaz-Fhilo et al. 2000) or 112–104 Ma (Maisey 2000; Koutsoukos 2000).

SOUTH AMERICAN PLATFORM

The largest geological feature of the region is the South American Platform, an ancient (Precambrian-Paleozoic; >250 Ma) accumulation of continental crust fragments that underlies all of Amazonia and adjacent regions, and occupies about 62% of the whole modern continent (Potter 1994; Almeida et al. 2000; Ribeiro 2006). Within this platform lie two large areas of exposed Precambrian crystalline igneous and metamorphic rocks; the Guiana and the Brazilian shields (Chapter 9). Shields are ancient and tectonically stable portions of continental crust that have survived the merging and splitting of continents and supercontinents for at least 500 million years, and are distinguished from regions of more recent geological origin that are subject to subsidence or downwarping (Almeida et al. 2000). The Guiana and Brazilian shields are embedded in the South American Platform, a more inclusive structure that consists of the shields and overlying Phanerozoic sediments and basalts (Almeida et al. 2000). The shields and platform have been present in approximately their modern forms throughout the entire evolutionary history of the modern Neotropical fauna. The terms cratons, shields, and platforms are described in a hierarchal fashion by Ab'Saber (1998) and Ribeiro (2006), in which cratons and their adjacent ancient folded belts constitute shields, and in which two or more shields welded together with associated overlying sediments and basalts constitute a continental platform.

Between the shield uplands and the Andean cordillera lies the Amazon-Orinoco lowlands, a large (c. 5.3 million km2), relatively fl at (low topographic relief), and highly dissected erosional surface (J. Costa et al. 2001), corresponding in part to the Ucayali Peneplain of K. Campbell and colleagues (2006) in the west, and to the Belterra clays in the east (Truckenbrodt et al. 1991). The validity of the Ucayali unconformity (sensu K. Campbell et al. 2001) as a time marker along all of western Amazonia has been disputed (Cozzuol 2006). The shield uplands and the Amazonian lowlands together constitute the majority of the total area of the South American Platform. The granitic shields have Precambrian (>540 Ma) origins that vastly predate the radiations of teleost fishes in the Upper Cretaceous (c. 100–66 Ma) and Paleogene (c. 66–22 Ma). The ancient shields have long since lost most of their easily eroded sediments, attaining only modest altitudes (up to c. 1,000 m), and as a result are drained by low-sediment clear-water rivers (e.g., Xingu, Tocantins, Trombetas, etc.). South American freshwater fish diversity is centered on Amazonia, including the Amazon and Orinoco basins and adjacent regions of the Guiana and Brazilian shields. This region constitutes the biogeographic core of the Neotropical ichthyological system (Chapter 2). In many ways the Amazon Basin served as both a cradle and a museum of organic diversity, an area where species originated, as well as a place where lineages accumulated through geological time (Stebbins 1974; Stenseth 1984; Chapter 2). The local (alpha) diversity of Amazonian ichthyofaunas is especially high, with many fl oodplain faunas represented by more than 100 locally abundant resident species (Chapter 10).

The South American Platform was the stage for diversification of the Neotropical aquatic biota (Lundberg, 1998). One of the prominent features of this platform is how low it lies in the earth's crust; about 50% of the total area of South America is below 250 m elevation, 72% below 500 m, and 87% below 1,000 m (Figure 1.4, see also Chapter 9). By comparison, the figures for Africa are 15% below 250 m, 50% below 500 m, and 79% below 1,000 m. Another way to express this exceptionally low elevation is that South America has more than twice the amount of area below 100 m as does Africa, despite having just 62% of the total surface area. One consequence of this low elevation and low topographic relief is that large portions of the South American Platform have been exposed to marine transgressions and regressions repeatedly over the course of the past c. 120 million years (Figure 1.2). Documenting the exact extents of these marine transgressions is an active area of research (Monsch 1998; Hernández et al. 2005; Roddaz et al. 2005; Hoorn 2006c; Rebata et al. 2006; Hoorn et al. 2010; Westaway 2006), yet regardless of the exact positions of paleocoastlines, it is clear that episodes of marine transgression drastically affected the extent and distribution of habitat available to obligate freshwater species.

Owing to a combination of eustatic (global) sea level changes and tectonic deformations of the continental platform, South American paleocoastlines have fl uctuated dramatically throughout the course of the Upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic (Rossetti 2001; K. Miller et al. 2005; Müller et al. 2008; R. N. Santos et al. 2008; Zachos et al. 2008; see Figure 1.5 and Chapter 6, Figure 6.1). Large portions of the continental interior have been exposed to repeated and prolonged episodes of seawater inundation (i.e., marine transgression), and then terrestrial (and freshwater) exposure due to marine regression. In addition to immediate extirpation of freshwater species living in newly inundated areas, contractions of the total available habitat greatly reduced the effective population sizes of species that did persist, and also increased their levels of genetic isolation. From a population genetic perspective, therefore, marine incursions are expected to have reduced, subdivided, and isolated populations (Woodruff 2003). These are precisely the demographic circumstances, referred to by Sewell Wright in his shifting balance theory, expected to accelerate rates of genetic drift and selection, resulting in more rapid speciation, adaptation, and extinction (Wright 1986; Coyne and Orr 1998). In a complementary way, marine regressions exposed large areas of lowland river and floodplain habitat, areas into which freshwater taxa were able to expand and diversify (Chapter 6).

Another consequence of the low-lying South American Platform is an active history of interbasin hydrological exchanges, resulting from headwater stream capture and the anastomoses of river mouths on alluvial fans, floodplains, and coastal plains (J. Huber 1998; Wilkinson et al. 2006). The repeated separation and merging of basins across watershed divides serves to both subdivide and reunite populations and species. Headwater capture enriches faunas at local and drainage-basin levels by allowing the mixing of previously isolated faunas on either side of a watershed divide, and also by isolating populations across the new divide (Figure 1.6; Menezes et al. 2008; Chapter 7). The exceptionally fl at landscapes of the lowland interstructural basins (Klammer 1984) provided numerous opportunities for headwater capture, sometimes associated even with relatively minor regional uplifts of just a few hundreds of meters (e.g., Fitzcarrald, Vaupes, and Michicola arches; Chapters 7, 11, and 14) or erosive action over long time frames on the geological stable shields (Chapters 9, 12, and 13). The effects of basin subdivision and dispersal on net rates of diversification are discussed in more detail in Chapters 2 and 7.

Stream capture by headwater erosion changes both the spatial location of a watershed divide and also the relative location of a headwater tributary basin; in other words, at evolutionary time scales stream capture acts simultaneously as a vicariant and a geodipsersal event (see examples in Chapter 7). At an ecological scale, stream capture events may be protracted over time, with new connections between watercourses preceding the disconnection of the old, as is observed in the case of the modern Río Casiquiare (i.e., the Casiquiare Canal) between the Amazon and Orinoco basins (Chapter 14). The longer such a transient connection persists between adjacent basins, the more likely it is that the stream capture event will result in a symmetrical exchange of species. Conversely, rapid stream capture events are more likely to be asymmetrical, favorably enriching the fauna of the encroaching basin.

ANDES AND FORELAND REGION

The Andes form the longest terrestrial mountain range on earth, extending as a continuous chain of highlands for over 7,000 km along the western margin of South America. The Andes are from 200 to 700 km wide (widest at 18°–20°S), and occupy about 1.6 million km2, or 9% of the total surface area of the continent (Chapter 16). The average height is about 4,000 m, and the tallest peaks rise to almost 7,000 m. For much of their length the Andes are composed of parallel ranges (Eastern and Western cordilleras), often with deep intermontane valleys.

The Andes may be divided into three main sections based on the age of their uplift and location; the Southern, Central, and Northern Andes, each with somewhat distinct although overlapping geological histories (V. Ramos 1999b; Steinmann et al. 1999; Coltorti and Ollier 2000; Hungerbühler et al. 2002). The Andes are of Late Cretaceous to Cenozoic age, and are therefore much younger than the shields of Precambrian origin (Roeder 1988; Sempere et al., 1990; Baby et al., 1992). The Andean Orogeny has lasted for more than 100 Ma, comprising distinct Peruvian, Incaic, and Quechuan phases (Cobbold et al. 2007). The main uplifts (i.e., orogenies) were associated with subduction of the Pacifi c and Nazca plates; the Peruvian Orogeny in the Aptian (125–112 Ma), the Incaic Orogeny in the Late Eocene (42–35 Ma), the Quechua 1 orogeny in the Early Miocene (23–17 Ma), the Quechua 2 Orogeny in the Late Miocene (9.5–7.0 Ma), the Quechua 3 Orogeny in the Latest Miocene and Early Pliocene (6.0–4.5 Ma), and the Quechua 4 Orogeny in the Pleistocene (1.8 Ma to present; A. Clark et al. 1990; Jaillard et al. 1990; Bouzari and Clark 2002; Cobbold and Rossello 2003; Mpodozis et al. 2005; L. Marshall et al. 1992; Rousse et al. 2002).

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

CONTRIBUTORS, ix,
PREFACE, xi,
PART ONE Continental Analysis,
1 Introduction to Neotropical Freshwaters JAMES S. ALBERT AND ROBERTO E. REIS, 3,
2 Major Biogeographic and Phylogenetic Patterns JAMES S. ALBERT, PAULO PETRY, AND ROBERTO E. REIS, 21,
3 Geological Development of Amazon and Orinoco Basins FRANK P. WESSELINGH AND CARINA HOORN, 59,
4 The Paraná-Paraguay Basin: Geology and Paleoenvironments MARIANA BREA AND ALEJANDRO F. ZUCOL, 69,
5 Species Richness and Cladal Diversity JAMES S. ALBERT, HENRY J. BART, JR., AND ROBERTO E. REIS, 89,
6 Paleogene Radiations HERNÁN LÓPEZ-FERNÁNDEZ AND JAMES S. ALBERT, 105,
7 Neogene Assembly of Modern Faunas JAMES S. ALBERT AND TIAGO P. CARVALHO, 119,
8 The Biogeography of Marine Incursions in South America DEVIN D. BLOOM AND NATHAN R. LOVEJOY, 137,
9 Continental-Scale Tectonic Controls of Biogeography and Ecology FLÁVIO C. T. LIMA AND ALEXANDRE C. RIBEIRO, 145,
10 An Ecological Perspective on Diversity and Distributions WILLIAM G. R. CRAMPTON, 165,
PART TWO Regional Analysis,
11 The Amazon-Paraguay Divide TIAGO P. CARVALHO AND JAMES S. ALBERT, 193,
12 The Eastern Brazilian Shield PAULO A. BUCKUP, 203,
13 The Guiana Shield NATHAN K. LUJAN AND JONATHAN W. ARMBRUSTER, 211,
14 The Vaupes Arch and Casiquiare Canal: Barriers and Passages KIRK O. WINEMILLER AND STUART C. WILLIS, 225,
15 Northern South America: Magdalena and Maracaibo Basins DOUGLAS RODRÍGUEZ-OLARTE, JOSÉ IVÁN MOJICA CORZO, AND DONALD C. TAPHORN BAECHLE, 243,
16 The Andes: Riding the Tectonic Uplift SCOTT SCHAEFER, 259,
17 Nuclear Central America C. DARRIN HULSEY AND HERNÁN LÓPEZ-FERNÁNDEZ, 279,
18 Not So Fast: A New Take on the Great American Biotic Interchange PROSANTA CHAKRABARTY AND JAMES S. ALBERT, 293,
GLOSSARY, 307,
LITERATURE CITED, 319,
NAME INDEX, 367,
INDEX, 369,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"An essential reference for anyone wanting to learn more about the diversity or history of South American fishes."—Frontiers of Biogeography

"An extremely important new addition to the library of anyone interested into Neotropical freshwater fishes or the Neotropics in general."—Systematic Biology

"Indispensible for every researcher in this area . . . useful for students to understand the different traits of neotropic evolution."—Bulletin of Fish Biology

Editorial Reviews

An extremely important new addition to the library of anyone interested into Neotropical freshwater fishes or the Neotropics in general.

Systematic Biology

An essential reference for anyone wanting to learn more about the diversity or history of South American fishes.

Frontiers Of Biogeography - Anne E. Magurran

Indispensible for every researcher in this area . . . useful for students to understand the different traits of neotropic evolution.

Bulletin Of Fish Biology