ISSN:
1573-5117
Keywords:
Anchihaline
;
Tethys
;
subterranean
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Biology
Notes:
Abstract Anchihaline habitats occur most frequently in subsiding areas. Typically, they are populated by ancestors of marine origin. These ancestral forms have a much wider distribution in the open sea, thus their hypogean descendents occur in phenetically similar populations on various islands. On the contrary, on rising islands, marine ancestors stranded during the uplift and got isolated in brackish or fresh ground waters, giving rise to phenetic and genetic isolates in very restricted areas. They belong to old genera with a large ditribution (amphi-Atlantic or Tethyan) The stygofaunas of both rising and subsiding areas thus originated in the sea, but contrary to the often uttered suggestions, not in the deep-sea. Phenetic resemblance between deep-sea and anchihaline taxa may indicate common ancestry, but then it must be shallow-water ancestry for both, simply because no deep-sea species survived the two oxygen-crises in the early and mid-Tertiary.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00006900
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