Figure 5.
Maximum likelihood ancestral range estimations and dispersal events for the Pleistocene Homo species/populations
R41 package BioGeoBEARS39,40 was used to estimate ancestral range probabilities and the number of dispersals. Topology of the phylogenetic tree is the same as that in Figure 4. The branch colors (red, blue, and green) indicate the geographical occurrences of the Homo fossils and the maximum likelihood ancestral range estimations for Homo under the best DEC + j model (dispersal-extinction cladogenesis38 with the founder-event dispersal39,40 model). The pie diagrams at the nodes show the relative probability of all possible ancestral distribution (areas or combinations of areas). Color shadows behind the phylogenetic tree indicate: I, H. erectus group; II, H. heidelbergensis/H. rhodesiensis group; III, Neanderthal group; IV, Harbin human group; V, H. sapiens group. Terminal taxa are linked with their geographical distributions. Grey arrows indicate the dispersal events between Africa, Asia, and Europe. Numbers near the arrowheads show the percentages of the means for the count of dispersal events between each pair of regions. The means are calculated from the event counts in each of 100 biogeographical stochastic maps. The common ancestor of the H. sapiens group and the common ancestor of the H. sapiens group, Harbin human group, and Neanderthal group are from Africa. However, the monophyletic clade embraced between the H. sapiens group and Asian H. erectus has an ancestral distribution in Asia. Asia received more dispersals from the other two continents. Africa received fewer dispersal from the other two continents.