Neoisoptera repetitively colonised Madagascar after the Middle Miocene climatic optimum

Madagascar is home to many endemic plant and animal species owing to its ancient isolation from other landmasses. This unique fauna includes several lineages of termites, a group of insects known for their key role in organic matter decomposition in many terrestrial ecosystems. How and when termites colonised Madagascar remains unknown. In this study, we used 601 mitochondrial genomes, 93 of which were generated from Madagascan samples, to infer the global historical biogeography of Neoisoptera, a lineage containing upwards of 80% of described termite species. Our results indicate that Neoisoptera colonised Madagascar between seven to ten times independently during the Miocene, between 8.4-16.6 Ma (95% HPD: 6.1-19.9 Ma). This timing matches that of the colonization of Australia by Neoisoptera. Furthermore, the taxonomic composition of the Neoisopteran fauna of Madagascar and Australia are strikingly similar, with Madagascar harbouring an additional two lineages absent from Australia. Therefore, akin to Australia, Neoisoptera colonised Madagascar during the global expansion of grasslands, possibly helped by the ecological opportunities arising from the spread of this new biome.

Historical biogeography of early diverging termite lineages (Isoptera: Teletisoptera)

Termites are social cockroaches distributed throughout warm temperate and tropical ecosystems. The ancestor of modern termites (crown-Isoptera) occurred during the earliest Cretaceous, approximately 140 million years ago, suggesting that both vicariance through continental drift and overseas dispersal may have shaped the distribution of early diverging termite lineages. We reconstruct the historical biogeography of three early diverging termite families – Stolotermitidae, Hodotermitidae, and Archotermopsidae – using the nuclear rRNA genes and mitochondrial genomes of 27 samples. Our analyses confirmed the monophyly of Stolotermitidae + Hodotermitidae + Archotermopsidae (clade Teletisoptera), with Stolotermitidae diverging from a monophyletic Hodotermitidae + Archotermopsidae approximately 100.3 Ma (94.3–110.4 Ma, 95% HPD), and with Archotermopsidae paraphyletic to a monophyletic Hodotermitidae. The Oriental Archotermopsis and the Nearctic Zootermopsis diverged 50.8 Ma (40.7–61.4 Ma, 95% HPD) before land connections between the Palearctic region and North America ceased to exist. The African Hodotermes + Microhodotermes diverged from Anacanthotermes, a genus found in Africa and Asia, 32.1 Ma (24.8–39.9 Ma, 95% HPD), and the most recent common ancestor of Anacanthotermes lived 10.7 Ma (7.3–14.3 Ma, 95% HPD), suggesting that Anacanthotermes dispersed to Asia using the land bridge connecting Africa and Eurasia ∼18–20 Ma. In contrast, the common ancestors of modern Porotermes and Stolotermes lived 20.2 Ma (15.7–25.1 Ma, 95% HPD) and 26.6 Ma (18.3–35.6 Ma, 95% HPD), respectively, indicating that the presence of these genera in South America, Africa, and Australia involved over-water dispersals. Our results suggest that early diverging termite lineages acquired their current distribution through a combination of over-water dispersals and dispersal via land bridges. We clarify the classification by resolving the paraphyly of Archotermopsidae, restricting the family to Archotermopsis and Zootermopsis, and elevating Hodotermopsinae (Hodotermopsis) as Hodotermopsidae (status novum).

Erforschung der kritisch bedrohten Süßwasserfauna des Vorderen Orients

Im oberen Miozän kollidierte die afroarabische Platte mit Eurasien. So entstand die Gomphotherium- Landbrücke, welche Paläarktis, Orientalis und Afrotropis miteinander verband und einen Faunenaustausch zwischen diesen Regionen über ständig wechselnde Gewässernetze ermöglichte, der jedoch mit zunehmender Aridität immer mehr eingeschränkt wurde. In den 1970er Jahren initiierte Ragnar Kinzelbach mit einer Serie von Forschungsreisen die systematische Erforschung der Hydrofauna der Levante, die er und seine Schüler*innen später auf den gesamten Vorderen Orient ausweiteten. Die umfangreichen, in Museen deponierten Sammlungen, die aufgrund fortschreitender Umweltzerstörung und bewaffneter Konflikte in der Region heute nur eingeschränkt zusammengetragen werden können, bilden eine wichtige Grundlage für fortlaufende Forschungsarbeiten und Naturschutzinitiativen. Anhand einiger Beispiele werden die rezente Biodiversität der Binnengewässer der Region und die Geschichte ihrer Besiedlung mit Süßwasserorganismen umrissen. Research into the Critically Endangered Freshwater Fauna of the Middle East Abstract: During the Upper Miocene, the Afro-Arabian Plate collided with Eurasia, giving rise to the Gomphotherium land bridge, which connects the Palaearctic, Oriental and Afrotropical realms, allowing for an exchange of faunal elements among these realms via an ever-changing network of freshwater connections. This migration, however, was soon restricted by increasing aridity. In the 1970s, Ragnar Kinzelbach initiated research activities on the freshwater fauna of the Levant, which he and his students later on extended to the entire Middle East. Extensive collections were deposited in museums, serving scientific research and conservation initiatives. Given increasing degradation of freshwater ecosystems and armed conflicts in the region, most of these collecting activities would no longer be possible today. The extant biodiversity of the region’s inland waters and its historical biogeography are briefly outlined.

Biotectonics of Sulawesi: Principles, methodology, and area relationships

Biotectonics is an approach to historical biogeography based on the analysis of independently derived biological and tectonic data, which we demonstrate using the island of Sulawesi as an example. We describe the tectonic development of Sulawesi and discuss the relationship between tectonic models and phylogenetic hypotheses. We outline the problem of interpreting areagrams based on single phylogenies and stress the importance of combining all available data into a general areagram. We analysed the distributions of Sulawesi area of endemism endemics (AEEs) using 30 published phylogenies, which were converted into paralogy-free taxon-area cladograms using the programme LisBeth (Zaragüeta-Bagalis et al. 2012) from which Adam’s consensus trees were constructed using PAUP (Swofford 2002). The results of our analyses show that the relationship between the areas of endemism is congruent with the terrane history of the island. A further 79 phylogenies of Sulawesi species with extralimital distributions were analysed to determine area relationships of Sulawesi within the broader Indo-Pacific region. We demonstrate the utility of data partitioning when dealing with areas that are geologically and biologically composite by showing that analysing Asian and Australasian elements of the Sulawesi biota separately produced general areagrams that avoid artifice and are interpretable in the light of current tectonic models.

Evolution of floral characters and biogeography of Heloniadeae (Melanthiaceae): an example of breeding system shifts with inflorescence change

Heloniadeae (Melanthiaceae) presents an East Asia–North America disjunct distribution. Different molecular and morphological data nevertheless support the tribe as a monophyletic group. However, their phylogenetic relationships and biogeographic history, together with the character evolution, are not clear. Therefore, we constructed a Bayesian phylogenetic tree for Heloniadeae using cpDNA and inferred the historical biogeography and floral character evolution. The results revealed that Heloniadeae was distributed in high-latitudes of East Asia and North America, originating since 22.2 mya. The East Asia clade migrated into southwest China, and subsequently colonized the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, the Ryukyus, and spread northward to Japan and southern Sakhalin. The evolution of the inflorescence and number of flowers were phylogenetically conserved, associated with the historical biogeography of Heloniadeae. The inflorescences transferred from raceme to sub-umbel, and the number of flowers decreased during the dispersal process, which may be accompanied by changes in the breeding system. Besides, the anthesis period was more affected by the habitat environment than phylogenetic constraints. The flowering temperature of was below 20 °C in most species, except H. kawanoi. Such a low temperature might not be conductive to pollinator activities, but it could be compensated by sustaining seed production with long-lasting flowers.