Aim To infer the biogeographical history of the avian clade Paridae (tits and chickadees) using methods based on discrete, a priori defined, geographical areas and a method that uses actual species distributions and a relaxed random walk in a Bayesian context. We compared their relative performances and how different area codings influenced the outcome in the discrete analyses. Location Holarctic, Indomalaya, Afrotropics. Meth...

Aim We investigated the historical biogeography of the Inuleae–Plucheinae (Asteraceae), a group of arid‐adapted plants with partly unresolved generic circumscriptions, in order to understand its origin and spatiotemporal evolutionary history in relation to the Cenozoic climate shifts. Location Global, with highest species diversity in the Southern Hemisphere. Methods The spatiotemporal biogeography of the Plucheinae was estima...

Aim The Cape region is known for its exceptional species richness, although much remains unknown regarding the appearance of the modern Cape flora. One explanation is that floral diversification was influenced by the establishment of winter rainfall/summer arid conditions hypothesized to have occurred towards the end of the Miocene. We studied the evolution and diversification of the plant genus Metalasia (Asteraceae–Gnaphalie...

Aim Panbiogeographers suggest that the biome in New Caledonia is of vicariant origin, dating from the Cretaceous – rather than being the result of repeated dispersal since c . 37 Ma, when the area is postulated to have re‐emerged after c . 15 million years of submergence. Distributions of the plant family Sapotaceae were used as a model system to test this, and to elucidate the probabilities of ancestral areas, all phrased in...