Notes on the biology, captive management and conservation status of the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect (Dryococelus australis) (Phasmatodea)

Honan, Patrick

doi:10.1007/s10841-008-9162-5

Cited by 36 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…The population size appeared not to exceed two dozen individuals, indicating that the species is indeed one of the rarest insects in the world ( Robertson 2006). Since its rediscovery, a captive population has been established at Melbourne Zoo and plans to reintroduce the species to Lord Howe Island after eradication of the rats has been prepared (Pain 2006;Honan 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These taxa are considered to be the closest relatives of Dryococelus (Gurney 1947;Hennemann & Conle 2006;Honan 2008), thus implying a dispersal of tree lobsters from New Guinea to Lord Howe Island along the former Lord Howe Rise. However, the Eurycanthinae is also recorded from New Caledonia, where it is represented by Canachus ( figure 1c,d ) among other less studied genera.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extreme convergence in stick insect evolution: phylogenetic placement of the Lord Howe Island tree lobster

2008

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The 'tree lobsters' are an enigmatic group of robust, ground-dwelling stick insects (order Phasmatodea) from the subfamily Eurycanthinae, distributed in New Guinea, New Caledonia and associated islands. Its most famous member is the Lord Howe Island stick insect Dryococelus australis (Montrouzier), which was believed to have become extinct but was rediscovered in 2001 and is considered to be one of the rarest insects in the world. To resolve the evolutionary position of Dryococelus, we constructed a phylogeny from approximately 2.4 kb of mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data from representatives of all major phasmatodean lineages. Our data placed Dryococelus and the New Caledonian tree lobsters outside the New Guinean Eurycanthinae as members of an unrelated Australasian stick insect clade, the Lanceocercata. These results suggest a convergent origin of the 'tree lobster' body form. Our reanalysis of tree lobster characters provides additional support for our hypothesis of convergent evolution. We conclude that the phenotypic traits leading to the traditional classification are convergent adaptations to ground-living behaviour. Our molecular dating analyses indicate an ancient divergence (more than 22 Myr ago) between Dryococelus and its Australian relatives. Hence, Dryococelus represents a long-standing separate evolutionary lineage within the stick insects and must be regarded as a key taxon to protect with respect to phasmatodean diversity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme convergence in stick insect evolution: phylogenetic placement of the Lord Howe Island tree lobster

2008

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“…Inspite of these differences, changes in the production and dispersion of melanin granules are ultimately responsible for changes in the dorsal colour of reptiles (Honan, 2008 r361 may be useful to determine the haplotype using allele-specific PCR or allele-specific hybridization.…”

Section: Structure Of Mc1r Genementioning

confidence: 99%

Role of MC1R Gene on Body Coat Colour

Mishra¹,

Mishra²,

Saikhom³

et al. 2017

Int. J. Livest. Res.

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“…Eggs (laid into a sand container specifically for that purpose) were then placed in an identical facility, and buried in different substrates to maximize chances of success. As of 2009, the Melbourne Zoo-raised population included 700 insects (and thousands of eggs), and plans are underway to repopulate Lord Howe Island with the tree lobster (Priddel et al (2003);Honan (2008); Buckley et al (2009);Carlile et al (2009)). …”

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confidence: 99%

“…The Melbourne Zoo environment was artificial-a peculiar case, in other words-in a number of ways: it was carefully climate-controlled; it was free of predators; it had a staff to administer nutrient solutions to sick tree lobsters (Honan (2008)). Given that the initial male and female brought to the zoo now have hundreds of living individual offspring (compared to a wild population still at similar numbers as when first discovered, per Carlile et al (2009)), it seems obvious that a tree lobster's fitness will be substantially elevated in the zoo relative to the bush on Ball's Pyramid.…”

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confidence: 99%

Stranger in a strange land: an optimal-environments account of evolutionary mismatch

Morris

2018

Synthese

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In evolutionary medicine, researchers characterize some outcomes as evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch problems arise as the result of organisms living in environments to which they are poorly adapted, typically as the result of some rapid environmental change. Depression, anxiety, obesity, myopia, insomnia, breast cancer, dental problems, and numerous other negative health outcomes have all been characterized as mismatch problems. The exact nature of evolutionary mismatch itself is unclear, however. This leads to a lack of clarity about the sorts of problems that evolutionary mismatch can actually explain. Resolving this challenge is important not only for the evolutionary health literature, but also because the notion of evolutionary mismatch involves central concepts in evolutionary biology: fitness, evolution in changing environments, and so forth.In this paper, I examine two characterizations of mismatch currently in the literature. I propose that we conceptualize mismatch as a relation between an optimal environment and an actual environment. Given an organism and its particular physiology, the optimal environment is the environment in which the organism's fitness is maximized: in other words, the optimal environment is that in which the organism's fitness is as high as it can possibly be. The actual environment is the environment in which the organism actually finds itself. To the extent that there is a discordance between the organism's actual and optimal environments, there is an evolutionary mismatch. In the paper, I show that this account of mismatch gives us the right result when other accounts fail, and provides useful targets for investigation.

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Notes on the biology, captive management and conservation status of the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect (Dryococelus australis) (Phasmatodea)

Cited by 36 publications

References 12 publications

Extreme convergence in stick insect evolution: phylogenetic placement of the Lord Howe Island tree lobster

Extreme convergence in stick insect evolution: phylogenetic placement of the Lord Howe Island tree lobster

Role of MC1R Gene on Body Coat Colour

Stranger in a strange land: an optimal-environments account of evolutionary mismatch

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