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Generation times and the Quaternary evolution of reef-building corals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

D. C. Potts
D. C. Potts*
Affiliation:
Biology Department and Center for Coastal Marine Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064
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Abstract

Faunal stasis among Indo-Pacific reef-building corals is explained as the result of chronic environmental disruptions preventing evolutionary processes from approaching completion since the Late Pliocene. The model assumes shallow reefal habitats (<20 m) on the continental shelves are major sites of scleractinian evolution and explores ecological and evolutionary consequences of high-frequency sea-level fluctuations and their associated transgression-regression cycles. Because single generations, dominated by a few large clonal genotypes, may persist indefinitely, local populations may not have experienced enough generations to approach evolutionary equilibrium with their environments during the estimated average duration (≈3200 yr) of existence of shallow habitats. Persistent consequences of chronic evolutionary disturbance may be the extensive intraspecific variation so characteristic of the dominant genera of shallow Indo-Pacific corals and the apparent paucity of recently evolved endemic species. The same disturbances may have accelerated speciation rates among reefal organisms with much shorter generation times.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Winter 1984 , pp. 48 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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