Evolutionary Dynamics of Caribbean Fauna

The Caribbean archipelago presents a remarkable natural laboratory for understanding how isolation, sea‐level change and human activity have shaped insular biodiversity. Overwater colonisation events have seeded terrestrial vertebrate lineages, which then diversified through adaptive radiation into novel ecological niches. Phylogenetic analyses reveal both single‐origin radiations, as in caviomorph rodents, and multiple independent arrivals, as in certain lizard and bird clades. Palaeogenomic and mitogenomic studies, complemented by the fossil record, demonstrate that body‐size evolution can proceed rapidly in insular settings, often in conjunction with niche differentiation. Holocene and historical human impacts—hunting, habitat conversion and introduction of invasive species—have driven extinction pulses that obscure true past diversity. Integrating ancient DNA, high‐resolution chronometry and morphological data unveils pre‐human biogeographic structure, elucidates anthropogenic reshaping of island faunas and informs conservation of relict lineages. These evolutionary dynamics carry global significance, offering insights into the processes that generate and erode biodiversity under changing climates and human pressures.

Research from Nature Portfolio

High‐resolution radiocarbon dating coupled with ancient DNA has uncovered a deep north–south split in the Bahamian hutia lineage predating human arrival, revealing how Indigenous translocations and extirpations reshaped genetic diversity across islands. Mitogenomic sequencing of extinct Bahamian tortoises shows shallow inter‐island divergences analogous to Galápagos radiations, indicating a single species persisted per archipelago and suggesting prehistoric human transport as a driver of genetic mixing. Together, these studies demonstrate the power of combining fossil calibration with genomic data to reconstruct insular evolutionary histories and to disentangle natural diversification from human‐mediated biogeographic change.

Evolutionary Dynamics of Caribbean Fauna publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in evolutionary dynamics of caribbean fauna across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Adaptive radiation: the rapid diversification of a single ancestral lineage into multiple species occupying distinct ecological niches.

Ancient DNA (aDNA): genetic material recovered from archaeological or fossil specimens, used to infer evolutionary relationships and past population structure.

Mitogenomics: the study of complete mitochondrial genomes to reconstruct phylogenies and estimate divergence times.

Waif dispersal: passive overwater transport of organisms, often via rafting, leading to colonisation of remote islands.

References

1. Ancient DNA and high-resolution chronometry reveal a long-term human role in the historical diversity and biogeography of the Bahamian hutia. Scientific Reports (2020).
2. Ancient mitogenomics elucidates diversity of extinct West Indian tortoises. Scientific Reports (2021).
3. Large-scale reptile extinctions following European colonization of the Guadeloupe Islands. Science Advances (2021).
4. Ancient DNA Suggests Single Colonization and Within-Archipelago Diversification of Caribbean Caviomorph Rodents. Molecular Biology and Evolution (2020).
5. Rapid size change associated with intra-island evolutionary radiation in extinct Caribbean “island-shrews”. BMC Ecology and Evolution (2020).