Dataset Information

Island Ancestors and New World Biogeography: A Case Study from the Scorpions (Buthidae: Centruroidinae).

ABSTRACT: Scorpions are an excellent system for understanding biogeographical patterns. Most major scorpion lineages predate modern landforms, making them suitable for testing hypotheses of vicariance and dispersal. The Caribbean islands are endowed with a rich and largely endemic scorpion fauna, the origins of which have not been previously investigated with modern biogeographical methods. Three sets of hypotheses have been proposed to explain present patterns of diversity in the Caribbean: (1) connections via land bridges, (2) vicariance events, and (3) overwater dispersal from continents and among islands. The present study investigates the biogeographical diversification of the New World buthid scorpion subfamily Centruroidinae Kraus, 1955, a clade of seven genera and more than 110 species; infers the ancestral distributions of these scorpions; and tests the relative roles of vicariance and dispersal in the formation of their present distributions. A fossil-calibrated molecular phylogeny was estimated with a Bayesian criterion to infer the dates of diversification events from which ancestral distributions were reconstructed, and the relative likelihood of models of vicariance vs. dispersal, calculated. Although both the timing of diversification and the ancestral distributions were congruent with the GAARlandia land-bridge hypothesis, there was no significant difference between distance-dependent models with or without the land-bridge. Heteroctenus Pocock, 1893, the Caribbean-endemic sister taxon of Centruroides Marx, 1890 provides evidence for a Caribbean ancestor, which subsequently colonized Central America and North America, and eventually re-colonized the Greater Antilles. This 'reverse colonization' event of a continent from an island demonstrates the importance of islands as a potential source of biodiversity.

SUBMITTER: Esposito LA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6401060 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Island Ancestors and New World Biogeography: A Case Study from the Scorpions (Buthidae: Centruroidinae).

Esposito Lauren A LA Prendini Lorenzo L

Scientific reports 20190305 1

Scorpions are an excellent system for understanding biogeographical patterns. Most major scorpion lineages predate modern landforms, making them suitable for testing hypotheses of vicariance and dispersal. The Caribbean islands are endowed with a rich and largely endemic scorpion fauna, the origins of which have not been previously investigated with modern biogeographical methods. Three sets of hypotheses have been proposed to explain present patterns of diversity in the Caribbean: (1) connectio ...[more]

PMID: 30837519

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Project description:A key challenge in island biogeography is to quantity the role of dispersal in shaping biodiversity patterns among the islands of a given archipelago. Here, we propose such a framework. Dispersal within oceanic archipelagos may be conceptualized as a spatio-temporal process dependent on: (1) the spatial distribution of islands, because the probability of successful dispersal is inversely related to the spatial distance between islands and (2) the chronological sequence of island formation that determines the directional asymmetry of dispersal (hypothesized to be predominantly from older to younger islands). From these premises, directional network models may be constructed, representing putative connections among islands. These models may be translated to eigenfunctions in order to be incorporated into statistical analysis. The framework was tested with 12 datasets from the Hawaii, Azores, and Canaries. The explanatory power of directional network models for explaining species composition patterns, assessed by the Jaccard dissimilarity index, was compared with simpler time-isolation models. The amount of variation explained by the network models ranged from 5.5% (for Coleoptera in Hawaii) to 60.2% (for Pteridophytes in Canary Islands). In relation to the four studied taxa, the variation explained by network models was higher for Pteridophytes in the three archipelagos. By the contrary, small fractions of explained variation were observed for Coleoptera (5.5%) and Araneae (8.6%) in Hawaii. Time-isolation models were, in general, not statistical significant and explained less variation than the equivalent directional network models for all the datasets. Directional network models provide a way for evaluating the spatio-temporal signature of species dispersal. The method allows building scenarios against which hypotheses about dispersal within archipelagos may be tested. The new framework may help to uncover the pathways via which species have colonized the islands of a given archipelago and to understand the origins of insular biodiversity.

Dataset Information

Island Ancestors and New World Biogeography: A Case Study from the Scorpions (Buthidae: Centruroidinae).

Publications

Island Ancestors and New World Biogeography: A Case Study from the Scorpions (Buthidae: Centruroidinae).

Similar Datasets

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