Latitudinal trends in genus richness of vascular plants in the Eocene and Oligocene of North America

Abstract

The latitudinal richness gradient is a frequent topic of study on the modern landscape, but its history in deep time is much less well known. Here, we preliminarily evaluated the paleolatitudinal richness gradient of vascular plants for the Eocene (56-33.9 million years ago) and Oligocene (33.9-23 million years ago) epochs of North America north of Mexico using 201 fossil floras. We calculated the direction and shape of the gradient using quadratic regression to detect linear and curvilinear trends. We performed regressions for the Eocene and Oligocene as well as for informal time intervals within the Eocene: early, middle, and middle + late. We found that quadratic models better explain the data than linear models for both epochs as well as for the early Eocene. A roughly linear trend in the middle and middle + late intervals may reflect limited sampling of high latitude floras for those times. The curvilinear relationship was weak for the Eocene and the model showed a peak in richness at 45.5°N. The curvilinear relationship was much stronger for the Oligocene and the peak occurred at 48.5°N. In the Eocene, the mid-latitude peak in richness may be explained by mean annual temperature, which was probably higher at some mid-latitudes than at lower ones. For the Oligocene, the peak in richness at mid-latitudes may be explained by evolutionary diversification within the temperate zone or by increased aridity at low latitudes. We also assessed the latitudinal richness gradient of genera within modern floras in North America north of Mexico and we found a weak, curvilinear trend with a peak in richness at 31.5°N. Our results suggest that the latitudinal genus richness gradient of vascular plants in North America continued to develop into its modern structure following the Oligocene.