This review explores the evolution of extant South American tropical biomes, focusing on
when and why they developed. Tropical vegetation experienced a radical transformation …

Abstract As the United Nations develops a post-2020 global biodiversity framework for the
Convention on Biological Diversity, attention is focusing on how new goals and targets for …

Understanding the origins of species richness patterns is a fundamental goal in ecology and
evolutionary biology. Much research has focused on explaining two kinds of species …

Northern Hemisphere forests changed drastically in the early Eocene with the diversification
of the oak family (Fagaceae). Cooling climates over the next 20 million years fostered the …

Predicting drought-induced mortality (DIM) of woody plants remains a key research
challenge under climate change. Here, we integrate information on the edaphoclimatic …

Hydraulic properties control plant responses to climate and are likely to be under strong
selective pressure, but their macro‐evolutionary history remains poorly characterised. To fill …

Early natural historians—Comte de Buffon, von Humboldt, and De Candolle—established
environment and geography as two principal axes determining the distribution of groups of …

It is largely unknown how South America's Andean forests affect the global carbon cycle,
and thus regulate climate change. Here, we measure aboveground carbon dynamics over …

Differences in species diversity over continental scales represent imprints of evolutionary,
ecological, and biogeographic events. Here, we investigate whether the higher tree species …

The Brazilian Caatinga is considered the richest nucleus of the Seasonally Dry Tropical
Forests (SDTF) in the Neotropics, also exhibiting high levels of endemism, but the timing of …