Slowly dispersing neotenic beetles can speciate on a penny coin and generate space-limited diversity in the tropical mountains

We demonstrate the controversial origin of a biological species within an area of a few kilometres in the absence of physical barriers. We employed nuclear rRNA/mitochondrial and genome-wide SNP approaches to infer relationships of four species of net-winged beetles characterised by female neoteny....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2016-09, Vol.6 (1), p.33579-33579, Article 33579
Main Authors: Bray, Timothy C., Bocak, Ladislav
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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Animals
Barriers
Biological Evolution
Clustering
Coleoptera - genetics
Coleoptera - physiology
Datasets
Dispersal
Ecological conditions
Ecosystem
Genetic isolation
Genitalia
Genomes
Geography
Humanities and Social Sciences
Male
Mitochondria
Mitochondrial DNA
Morphology
Mountains
multidisciplinary
Neoteny
Phylogeny
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide - genetics
rRNA
Science
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Single-nucleotide polymorphism
Spatial distribution
Speciation
Species
Species Specificity
Tropical Climate
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Summary:We demonstrate the controversial origin of a biological species within an area of a few kilometres in the absence of physical barriers. We employed nuclear rRNA/mitochondrial and genome-wide SNP approaches to infer relationships of four species of net-winged beetles characterised by female neoteny. Three species are distributed at low elevations and a single population colonised a 40 km 2 highland plateau and established distinct biological species despite incomplete genetic isolation. The speciation process is extreme in the highly localised spatial scale, due to the low dispersal power of neotenics and provides clear support for a microallopatric model based on ecological conditions. In contrast with neutral evolution in a homogenous environment, as demonstrated by the genetic divergence and morphological similarity of two widely distributed low-mountain species, the environmental characteristics of the high-mountain plateau led to the origin of a species adapted to the local mimetic pattern and characterised by morphologically distinct genitalia. We conclude that the low dispersal propensity promotes neutral genetic differentiation in the first stage, but environmental characteristics play an important role the final phase of the speciation process. The unexpected speciation at such an extreme geographic scale points to the in situ origin and uniqueness of the mountain fauna.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep33579