Understanding the Eocence dispersal of primates to better model large-scale dispersals
Recent studies show that the distribution of many modern terrestrial species can be explained by a handful amount of large-scale dispersals and that these episodes will likely become more numerous under climatic stress. However, the underlying mechanisms governing these dispersals remain nebulous. Long-distance dispersals across marine barriers, often referred to sweepstakes dispersals, have always been assumed to be an unpredictable process in which taxa overcome a geographic barrier in a random manner. Yet, there are many instances of dispersals across marine barriers that appear coordinated and non-random. New paleontological findings show that during a short time period marked by intense climate variations, 40 to 35 million years ago, Asian anthropoid primates and rodents crossed 500 km of Tethys Sea to reach Africa and 800 km of South Atlantic Ocean to reach South America. This project aims to build an empirical and theoretical basis for the origins and mechanisms of long-distance dispersals by resolving: how did primates and other mammals disperse across two major seaways? What are the external forcing mechanisms that make transoceanic dispersals non-random?
This project uses a combination of paleoclimatic, paleogeographic, and paleontological approaches to evaluate the mechanisms of species dispersal and diversification in deep time, applied to the early dispersal of anthropoid primates. This is one of the biggest mysteries in paleontology, as this episode ranks among the most pivotal events during all of primate evolutionary history.
Collaborators: The ERC project involves multiple colleagues from my other projects (see here and here) and funds the position of PhD students Paul Botté (CEREGE) and Benjamin Raynaud (MNHN), postdoc Leny Montheil (CEREGE) as well as Anne Lise Jourdan (CEREGE), engineer and expert of our new clumped isotope lab.
This project was started in 2022 and has not been featured in any publication yet. A short article in La Provence gives more details about it (in French). The project is a Consolidator Grant Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 101043268).
Alexis Licht 