title: Neotropical forest expansion during the last glacial period challenges refuge hypothesis.
abstract: The forest refuge hypothesis (FRH) has long been a paradigm for explaining the extreme biological diversity of tropical forests. According to this hypothesis, forest retraction and fragmentation during glacial periods would have promoted reproductive isolation and consequently speciation in forest patches (ecological refuges) surrounded by open habitats. The recent use of paleoclimatic models of species and habitat distributions revitalized the FRH, not by considering refuges as the main drivers of allopatric speciation, but instead by suggesting that high contemporary diversity is associated with historically stable forest areas. However, the role of the emerged continental shelf on the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot of eastern South America during glacial periods has been ignored in the literature. Here, we combined results of species distribution models with coalescent simulations based on DNA sequences to explore the congruence between scenarios of forest dynamics through time and the genetic structure of mammal species cooccurring in the central region of the Atlantic Forest. Contrary to the FRH predictions, we found more fragmentation of suitable habitats during the last interglacial (LIG) and the present than in the last glacial maximum (LGM), probably due to topography. We also detected expansion of suitable climatic conditions onto the emerged continental shelf during the LGM, which would have allowed forests and forest-adapted species to expand. The interplay of sea level and land distribution must have been crucial in the biogeographic history of the Atlantic Forest, and forest refuges played only a minor role, if any, in this biodiversity hotspot during glacial periods.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910, Vitória, ES, Brazil; yuri_leite@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Yuri L R
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0248-8738
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Leite
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910, Vitória, ES, Brazil;
authors.forename: Leonora P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910, Vitória, ES, Brazil;
authors.forename: Ana Carolina
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Loss
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910, Vitória, ES, Brazil; Departamento de Biologia, Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e do Mar, Campus Universitário de Santiago, Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal;
authors.forename: Rita G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Rocha
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia, 40170-115, Salvador, BA, Brazil;
authors.forename: Henrique
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Batalha-Filho
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Oceanografia e Ecologia, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910, Vitória, ES, Brazil;
authors.forename: Alex C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Bastos
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Oceanografia e Ecologia, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910, Vitória, ES, Brazil;
authors.forename: Valéria S
authors.initials: VS
authors.lastname: Quaresma
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Centro de Ciências Humanas e Naturais, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29075-910, Vitória, ES, Brazil;
authors.forename: Valéria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Fagundes
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ciências da Saúde, Centro Universitário Norte do Espírito Santo, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 29932-540, São Mateus, ES, Brazil;
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Paresque
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Lavras, 37200-000, Lavras, MG, Brazil;
authors.forename: Marcelo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Passamani
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-090, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Renata
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pardini
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D002980:Climate; D017753:Ecosystem; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D065928:Forests; D058974:Phylogeography
keywords: Atlantic Forest; Quaternary; continental shelf; last glacial maximum; sea level