Biogeographic disjunction along the Alpine fault, New Zealand

Abstract

Eighty taxa (subspecies, species, species groups, genera and families) showing disjunction along the New Zealand Alpine fault (Australian/Pacific plate boundary) are documented and mapped. Four plant divisions, including 14 seed plant families, and four animal phyla, including 13 orders of insects, are represented. The disjunction has usually been explained by glaciers having wiped out central populations. However, the gap is often occupied by a related taxon and many alpine taxa are involved, and so extinction by glaciation seems unlikely as an explanation. It is proposed that the disjunction has been caused by the 480 km of lateral displacement on the fault. 0 I998 The Linnean Society or London ADDITIONAL KEY WORDS:-biogeographydisjunctionseed plants -Nothofagus -

New Zealand geckos (Diplodactylidae): Cryptic diversity in a post-Gondwanan lineage with trans-Tasman affinities

“…In addition, New Zealand remains seismically active (Morgan-Richards et al, 2000). The interplay of these elements has contributed to the region's dynamic history and has strongly affected the evolution of the New Zealand biota (Heads, 1998;Trewick and Wallis, 2001;Heads and Craw, 2004;Haase et al, 2007;Liggins et al, 2008).…”

“…Confidence intervals for many lineage splits within these major gecko clades are too broad to permit linkages to specific candidate cladogenic events, but a number of geological processes are likely to have played a role. These include lateral displacement of the Alpine Fault (Heads, 1998), Pliocene mountain building (McGlone, 1985), and Pleistocene glaciation (Wardle, 1988) primarily in the South Island, and changing sea levels (King, 2000) and volcanism (Manville and Wilson, 2004) in the North Island. All of these processes have been implicated in the diversification and establishment of specific and infraspecific-level spatial patterns (e.g., Morgan-Richards et al, 2000;Trewick and Wallis, 2001;Haase et al, 2007;Liggins et al, 2008;O'Neill et al, 2008;Boyer and Giribet, 2009).…”

Evolution of New Zealand's terrestrial fauna: a review of molecular evidence

“…Prior to the Pleistocene, the configuration of islands in the New Zealand archipelago was quite different from that of today, with, in particular, numerous small islands in the north during the Pliocene (Fleming 1979;Isaac et al 1994;Ballance & Williams 1992). A prominent biogeographic feature in South Island is the north-south disjunction of many species distributions and this pattern, referred to as the 'beech gap', has been attributed to vicariant separation by movement along the Alpine fault that extends through the island (Heads 1998;. However, molecular evidence from a wide range of invertebrate taxa reveal phylogenetic patterns and levels of genetic diversity that are inconsistent with this inference .…”

Finding Fault with Vicariance: A Critique of Heads (1998)

“…The method of Heads (1998;henceforth Heads98) involves solely collation of distribution maps. However, disjunct distributions alone cannot be used to support alternative hypotheses.…”

“…These authors adopt a panbiogeographic approach, the central philosophy of which is to focus on "the role of locality and place in the history of life" (Craw et al, 1999:4). Heads (1998) has recently published a series of 72 distribution maps for plant and animal taxa in South Island, New Zealand: algae, lichens, mosses, monocots, dicots, molluscs, annelids, and arthropods. These distributions typically comprise a cluster of points in the northwest (Nelson region; west of the Alpine Fault), and another Kamp, 1992).…”