David J Cantrill

Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria

The island of New Caledonia is known for its rich and endemic flora, which includes the earliest-diverging extant angiosperm lineage and one of the highest concentrations of conifer diversity in the world. The New Caledonian flora has often been regarded as containing many relictual elements, preserving Gondwanan lineages dating to before the break...

We report the discovery of an ancient forest bed near Stanley, on the Falkland Islands, the second such ancient deposit identified on the South Atlantic island archipelago that is today marked by the absence of native tree species. Fossil pollen, spores and wood fragments preserved in this buried deposit at Tussac House show that the source vegetat...

The generation and analysis of genome-scale data—genomics—is driving a rapid increase in plant biodiversity knowledge. However, the speed and complexity of technological advance in genomics presents challenges for its widescale use in evolutionary and conservation biology. Here, we introduce and describe a national-scale collaboration conceived to...

During ongoing investigations of flower-insect interactions in the Eocene of Central Europe we discovered two different beetles, a Scarabaeidae (scarab) and Cerambycidae (longhorn) beetle from the Middle Eocene of Messel (Germany), with their bellies full of the same peculiar pollen type. In light microscopy (LM), the pollen grains are small, spher...

Angiosperms are the cornerstone of most terrestrial ecosystems and human livelihoods1,2. A robust understanding of angiosperm evolution is required to explain their rise to ecological dominance. So far, the angiosperm tree of life has been determined primarily by means of analyses of the plastid genome3,4. Many studies have drawn on this foundation...

Eucalypts are a large and ecologically important group of plants on the Australian continent, and understanding their evolution is important in understanding evolution of the unique Australian flora. Previous phylogenies using plastome DNA, nuclear-ribosomal DNA, or random genome-wide SNPs, have been confounded by limited genetic sampling or by idi...

We present a phylogeographic study of the tree species Eucalyptus baueriana Schauer, which occurs in disjunct areas on the near coastal plains and ranges of the south-east Australian mainland. DArTseq data are used to build a phylogeny including E. baueriana and closely related taxa to test its monophyly, test the genetic distinctness of the three...

To investigate the relationships among species in the taxonomically problematic Eucalyptus odorata species complex, we generated molecular data using double-digest restriction site-associated DNA sequencing (ddRADseq) and Diversity Arrays Technology sequencing (DArTseq). These data were analysed utilising principal-component analysis (PCA), phyloge...

Acacia (Leguminosae, Caesalpinioideae, mimosoid clade) is the largest and most widespread genus of plants in the Australian flora, occupying and dominating a diverse range of environments, with an equally diverse range of forms. For a genus of its size and importance, Acacia currently has surprisingly few genomic resources. Acacia pycnantha, the go...

Reduced precipitation in the Miocene triggered the geographic contraction of rainforest ecosystems around the world. In Australia, this change was particularly pronounced; mesic rainforest ecosystems that once dominated the landscape transformed into the shrublands, grasslands, and deserts of today. A lack of well-preserved fossils has made it diff...

A Neogene hematite-goethite concretionary ‘ironstone’ horizon in lateritized fluvial sediments in the Massif du Sud of New Caledonia yields abundant fossil dicotyledonous angiosperm leaves. The leaves are preserved in iron oxide, mainly goethite, which replicates the morphology and anatomy of the leaf tissues and comprises 73% of the matrix. Organi...

Organelle genomes are typically represented as single, static, circular molecules. However, there is evidence that the chloroplast genome exists in two structural haplotypes and that the mitochondrial genome can display multiple circular, linear or branching forms. We sequenced and assembled chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes of the Golden Wattl...

We aimed to test the extent to which plastid DNA gives incongruent phylogeographic patterns to nuclear DNA in a species of eucalypt, Eucalyptus behriana, a taxonomic group where chloroplast capture is a well-established phenomenon. Furthermore, we aimed to test the degree of influence chloroplast capture has on the observed patterns by broadly samp...

New Caledonia was, until recently, considered an old continental island harbouring a rich biota with outstanding Gondwanan relicts. However, deep marine sedimentation and tectonic evidence suggest complete submergence of the island during the latest Cretaceous to the Paleocene. Molecular phylogenies provide evidence for some deeply-diverging clades...

New Caledonia was, until recently, considered an old continental island harbouring a rich biota with outstanding Gondwanan relicts. However, deep marine sedimentation and tectonic evidence suggest complete submergence of the island during the latest Cretaceous to Paleocene. Molecular phylogenies provide evidence for some deeply-diverging clades tha...

Although organelle genomes are typically represented as single, static, circular molecules, there is evidence that the chloroplast genome exists in two structural haplotypes and that the mitochondrial genome can display multiple circular, linear or branching forms. We sequenced and assembled chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes of the Golden Wattl...

Aim To infer relationships between populations of the semi‐arid, mallee eucalypt, Eucalyptus behriana, to build hypotheses regarding evolution of major disjunctions in the species' distribution and to expand understanding of the biogeographical history of southeastern Australia. Location Southeastern Australia. Taxon Eucalyptus behriana (Myrtacea...

Abstract Paleocene leaf floras are rare in high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere, where studies have shown higher taxonomic diversity compared to Northern Hemisphere equivalents. The floras provide valuable insights into biodiversity and forest communities during the Paleocene. The Antarctic Peninsula hosts a wealth of Paleocene–Eocene floras w...

Global climate change poses a significant threat to natural communities around the world, with many plant species showing signs of climate stress. Grassland ecosystems are not an exception, with climate change compounding contemporary pressures such as habitat loss and fragmentation. In this study we assess the climate resilience of Themeda triandr...

Earth’s vegetation during the 186 million years of the Mesozoic, from the Paleogene–Cretaceous boundary at 66 million years ago back to the Triassic–Permian boundary at 252 million years ago, was filled with forests. Like today, the forest was the dominant terrestrial ecosystem. The trees that created the forest habitat, along with the other woody...

The Northern Hemisphere dominates our knowledge of Mesozoic and Cenozoic fossilized tree resin (amber) with few findings from the high southern paleolatitudes of Southern Pangea and Southern Gondwana. Here we report new Pangean and Gondwana amber occurrences dating from ~230 to 40 Ma from Australia (Late Triassic and Paleogene of Tasmania; Late Cre...

Fragmented grassland ecosystems, and the species that shape them, are under immense pressure. Restoration and management strategies should include genetic diversity and adaptive capacity to improve success but these data are generally unavailable. Therefore, we use the foundational grass, Themeda triandra , to test how spatial, environmental, and p...

This "preprint" is more of an announcement of a book chapter that I edited and, with 6 others, co-authored called "Postcards from the Mesozoic: Forest landscapes with giant flowering trees, enigmatic seed ferns, and other naked-seed plants." Revised files (50 pages of chapter text, 18 text figures, 55 teaching slides and explanations) were submitte...

The Marine Mesozoic Revolution (MMR, starting ~200 million years ago) changed the ecological structure of sea floor communities due to increased predation pressure. It was thought to have caused the migration of less mobile invertebrates, such as stalked isocrinid crinoids, into deeper marine environments by the end of the Mesozoic. Recent studies...

Pollen analysis is widely used to verify the geographic origin of honeys, but has never been employed in Australia. In this study, we analysed the pollen content of 173 unblended honey samples sourced from most of the commercial honey producing regions in southern Australia. Southern Australian vegetation is dominated by Eucalyptus (Myrtaceae) fore...

Pollen percentage data. (TXT)

Brief descriptions of Myrtaceae morphotypes featured in Fig 5. (DOCX)

Localities of honey producing sites. (DOCX)

Premise of the Study Globally, natural history collections are focused on digitizing specimens and information and making these data accessible. Usage information on National Herbarium of Victoria data made available through the Atlas of Living Australia and The Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) is analyzed to understand how and by whom herbariu...

Lower Cretaceous (Barremian to Albian) fossil plant assemblages are preserved in sediments of the Otway Group, Otway Basin, and contemporaneous Strzelecki Group, Gippsland Basin, southeastern Australia. Detailed lithofacies and biofacies analyses of terrestrial strata within the upper Eumeralla Formation (Albian), Otway Group, allow fine-scale inte...

Mays, C. & Cantrill, D.J., January 2018. Protodammara reimatamoriori, a new species of conifer (Cupressaceae) from the Upper Cretaceous Tupuangi Formation, Chatham Islands, Zealandia. Alcheringa XXX, X–X. ISSN 0311-5518. Isolated conifer female reproductive structures are common fossil elements from Cenomanian (ca 99–94 Ma) charcoal- and resin-rich...

This study presents a phylogeny of Zieria Sm. (Rutaceae) based on sequences of internal transcribed spacer and external transcribed spacer regions of nrDNA, and using Neobyrnesia suberosa J.A.Armstr. as the outgroup. The phylogeny includes 109 samples, representing 58 of the 60 currently recognised species of Zieria, with multiple accessions of mos...

Proteaceae subfamily Persoonioideae, as presently circumscribed, consists of the monogeneric tribe Placospermeae (Placospermum) and the tribe Persoonieae. The latter comprises the diverse genus Persoonia and monospecific genera found in New Zealand (Toronia), New Caledonia (Garnieria) and south-western Western Australia (Acidonia). Persoonia has 10...

In Australia, Poaceae tribe Poeae are represented by 19 genera and 99 species, including economically and environmentally important native and introduced pasture grasses [e.g. Poa (Tussock-grasses) and Lolium (Ryegrasses)]. We used this tribe, which are well characterised in regards to morphological diversity and evolutionary relationships, to test...

Success rates (percentages) for specimen identification using distance-based methods (nearest neighbour, best close match, and threshold ID [24], as outlined in the text) based on individual (ITS) and concatenated (rbcL+matK, rbcL+matK+ITS) DNA barcode markers. BCM, Best close match; ITS, Internal transcribed spacer; NN, Nearest neighbour; TID, Thr...

Voucher specimen data for individuals, presence or absence of sequence data in individual and concatenated DNA barcode markers, Barcode Of Life Data System (BOLD) reference numbers, and presence or absence of voucher specimen images. AD, State Herbarium of South Australia; BRI, Queensland Herbarium; CANB, Australian National Herbarium; HO, Tasmania...

Summary statistics and sequence quality of individual and concatenated DNA barcode markers for specimen identification and species discovery based on distance- (dataset A) and tree- (dataset B) based methods. (PDF)

Success rates for specimen identification using tree-based (maximum likelihood or Bayesian inference phylogenies with specimens identified according to the “liberal” tree-based method of Meier et al. [24], as outlined in the text) methods for individual (ITS) and concatenated (rbcL+matK+ITS) DNA barcode markers. BA, Bayesian inference; ITS, Interna...

The Bayesian inference of phylogenetic relationships among Australian tribe Poeae based on the concatenated (rbcL+matK+ITS) DNA barcode markers. Support values are provided above the branches including bootstrap (maximum likelihood) and posterior probabilities (Bayesian inference) before and after the forward slash, respectively. (EPS)

Several highly effective fire-adaptive traits first evolved among modern plants during the mid-Cretaceous, in response to the widespread wildfires promoted by anomalously high atmospheric oxygen (O2) and extreme temperatures. Serotiny, or long-term canopy seed storage, is a fire-adaptive strategy common among plants living in fire-prone areas today...

The Tupuangi Flora of the Chatham Islands, New Zealand, reveals a south polar forest ecosystem, and important biogeographical links between eastern and western Gondwana. We employed neutron tomography (NT) to image fossil Cupressaceae seed cones from the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian) strata of the Tupuangi Formation. This technique facilitated the...

Background and aims: Species are often used as the unit for conservation, but may not be suitable for species complexes where taxa are difficult to distinguish. Under such circumstances, it may be more appropriate to consider species groups or populations as evolutionarily significant units (ESUs). A population genomic approach was employed to inv...

Halfordia F.Muell is a genus of rainforest trees or shrubs native to New Guinea, New Britain, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and eastern Australia. There is debate about the number of species that should be recognised in the genus. Four species have been named, but authors have commonly recognised only two species, and some recent treatments accept just on...

Pimelea Banks & Sol. ex Gaertn. is a genus of flowering plants comprising an estimated 90 species in Australia and ∼35 species in New Zealand. The genus is economically important, with the inflorescences of some species having floricultural applications, and the presence of toxic compounds in several species proving poisonous to livestock. Pimelea...

The paucity of late Paleogene and Neogene floras from Antarctica limits our ability to understand the interplay between Antarctic climate evolution and the impact that glaciation had on the vegetation, in particular, how the vegetation changed from temperate Eocene forests, to today’s sparse vegetation. Fluvial and lacustrine strata deposited in a...

Premise of research. The Cenozoic fossil record is crucial for understanding the evolution of the remarkably high diversity of angiosperms. However, the quality and biases of the angiosperm fossil record remain unclear mainly due to the lack of a global database. Methodology. We introduce a new global occurrence-based database for Cenozoic angiospe...

As currently circumscribed, Boronia (Rutaceae) is a large Australian genus of 148 species distributed in all states and mainland territories, and Boronella is confined to New Caledonia and contains ∼four species. We present molecular phylogenetic analyses of these genera, based on chloroplast (trnL-trnF) and nuclear (ITS, ETS) DNA sequences, to ass...

Selenium (Se) is one of the key trace elements required by all animal and most plant life, and Se deficiencies in the food chain cause pathologies or death. Here we show from new geochemical analyses of trace elements in Phanerozoic marine pyrite that sustained periods of severe Se depletion in the past oceans correlate closely with three major mas...

The Nomenclature Committee on Fossils has been dealing with numerous conservation proposals for names of fossil-genera that originally contained a hyphen (Doweld in Taxon 62: 638–642. 2013). Doweld correctly indicated that Art. 60.9 in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (the Melbourne Code, McNeill & al. in Regnum V...

The Albian Alexander Island macrofossil flora from the Antarctic Peninsula preserves a diverse community of liverworts (Marchantiophyta), ferns (Polypodiopsida), Lycopodiales, Equisetales, Cycadales, Ginkgoales, seed-ferns (Bennettitales and Pentoxylales), Coniferales, and the first representatives of angiospermous leaves in Antarctica. Despite the...

Taxonomic uncertainty exists regarding the circumscription of seven phenotypically similar Australian taxa: Poa crassicaudex Vickery, P. hookeri Vickery, P. labillardierei Steud., P. phillipsiana Vickery, P. poiformis (Labill.) Druce, P. porphyroclados Nees, and P. sieberiana Spreng. Multivariate ordination and clustering analyses of morphologic...

Cheirolepidiaceae leaves and pollen are recorded from Valanginian–Albian strata of southeastern Australia that were deposited at high-latitudes under cool, moist climates in contrast to the semi-arid or coastal habitats preferred by many northern Gondwanan and Laurasian representatives of this group. Leaves of this family are characterized by thick...

This study presents a molecular phylogeny of Zieria Sm., a genus of shrubs and small trees, with 59 species in Australia and one endemic to New Caledonia. The phylogeny is based on four cpDNA markers and 116 samples representing all species of Zieria except one, and the monotypic outgroup Neobyrnesia suberosa. The New Caledonian species, Z. chevali...