• DOI:10.1146/ANNUREV.ECOLSYS.29.1.263
• Corpus ID: 44508826

EARLY EVOLUTION OF LAND PLANTS: Phylogeny, Physiology, and Ecology of the Primary Terrestrial Radiation

@article{Bateman1998EARLYEO,
  title={EARLY EVOLUTION OF LAND PLANTS: Phylogeny, Physiology, and Ecology of the Primary Terrestrial Radiation},
  author={Richard M. Bateman and Peter R. Crane and William A. DiMichele and Paul Kenrick and Nick P. Rowe and Thomas Speck and William Stein},
  journal={Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics},
  year={1998},
  volume={29},
  pages={263-292}
}

• R. Bateman, P. Crane, +4 authors W. Stein
• Published 1 November 1998
• Environmental Science
• Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics

▪ Abstract The Siluro-Devonian primary radiation of land biotas is the terrestrial equivalent of the much-debated Cambrian “explosion” of marine faunas. Both show the hallmarks of novelty radiations (phenotypic diversity increases much more rapidly than species diversity across an ecologically undersaturated and thus low-competition landscape), and both ended with the formation of evolutionary and ecological frameworks analogous to those of modern ecosystems. Profound improvements in understanding early land plant evolution reflect recent liberations from several research constraints: Cladistic techniques plus DNA sequence data from extant relatives have prompted revolutionary reinterpretations of land plant phylogeny, and thus of systematics and character-state acquisition patterns. Biomechanical and physiological experimental techniques developed for extant plants have been extrapolated to fossil species, with interpretations both aided and complicated by the recent knowledge that global landmass positi...