Phylogeography of the pademelons (Marsupialia: Macropodidae: Thylogale) in New Guinea reflects both geological and climatic events during the Plio-Pleistocene

Abstract

Aim Alternative hypotheses concerning genetic structuring of the widespread endemic New Guinean forest pademelons (Thylogale) based on current taxonomy and zoogeography (northern, southern and montane species groupings) and preliminary genetic findings (western and eastern regional groupings) are investigated using mitochondrial sequence data. We examine the relationship between the observed phylogeographical structure and known or inferred geological and historical environmental change during the late Tertiary and Quaternary.Location New Guinea and associated islands.Methods We used primarily museum specimen collections to sample representatives from Thylogale populations across New Guinea and three associated islands. Mitochondrial cytochrome b and control region sequence data were used to construct phylogenies and estimate the timing of population divergence.

Testing the effect of transient Plio-Pleistocene barriers in monsoonal Australo-Papua: did mangrove habitats maintain genetic connectivity in the Black Butcherbird?

“…The break between the two divergent haplotype groups (dA: 0.8%; five fixed mutations) broadly coincides with the Watut–Tauri Gap—a valley dividing the Owen Stanley ranges and the Central ranges (Flannery 1990; Shearman & Bryan 2011). Observations of morphological disjunctions in several other bird species (Schodde 2006), as well as estimated Pliocene divergences among southwestern and southeastern populations of forest‐edge‐dwelling Pademelons ( Thylogale browni complex) (Macqueen et al. 2011), suggest that this region might have acted as an important barrier to gene flow for many lowland species.…”

Structure and function of the cassowary's casque and its implications for cassowary history, biology and evolution

“…In view of this, it has generally been assumed that terrestrial vertebrate taxa shared between Australia and New Guinea split during the Pleistocene -in other words, that any taxon endemic to New Guinea is geologically very young. However, a growing number of molecular studies have proposed that terrestrial snakes (Kuch et al 2005), birds (Joseph et al 2001), mammals (Rowe et al 2008;Malekian et al 2010;Meredith et al 2010;Macqueen et al 2011) and other vertebrates moved between Australia and New Guinea during the Pliocene or even the Late Miocene. While we remain open to the possibility that crown -cassowaries migrated to New Guinea during the Pliocene or Miocene, the fact that the same species of cassowary -Casuarius casuarius, the sister-taxon of other crown -cassowaries ( Figure 4) -occurs on Australia as well as New Guinea leads us to hypothesise that the movement of crowncassowaries to New Guinea occurred during the Pleistocene.…”

The towering orogeny of New Guinea as a trigger for arthropod megadiversity

“…The general approach has been used for studies of birds 10,[16][17][18] , fishes 10 and mammals [19][20][21][22][23] . Results suggest that species-level diversification within New Guinea has been recent (o5 Ma), corroborating geological evidence that dates substantial landmass formation to o10 Ma 24,25 .…”