The molecular phylogeographic bridge between deep and shallow history in continental biotas.

Recent studies have provided evidence that species diversity and distributions in continental biotas reflect a long history of responses (e.g. range shifts, speciation or adaptation) to habitat changes produced by geological activity over the past several million years (deep time) as well as glacial-interglacial cycles over the most recent hundreds of thousands of years (shallow time). Molecular sequences in extant taxa can be used to infer speciation and biogeographic history in deep time, as well as changes in population distributions produced by range shifts in shallow time, and thus provide a basis for constructing bridges between historical biogeographic, paleoecological and ecological biogeographic perspectives. References.