Research investigating the geographical context of speciation has primarily focused on abiotic factors such as the role of Pleistocene glacial cycles, or geotectonic events. Few study systems allow a direct comparison of how biological differences, such as dispersal behaviour, affect population genetic structure of organisms that were subdivided during the Pleistocene. Mormon crickets exist in ...

Australian dinosaurs have played a rare but controversial role in the debate surrounding the effect of Gondwanan break-up on Cretaceous dinosaur distribution. Major spatiotemporal gaps in the Gondwanan Cretaceous fossil record, coupled with taxon incompleteness, have hindered research on this effect, especially in Australia. Here we report on two new sauropod specimens from the early Late Creta...

Tropical transpacific fishes occur on both sides of the world’s largest deep-water barrier to the migration of marine shore organisms, the 4,000to 7,000-km-wide Eastern Pacific Barrier (EPB). They include 64 epipelagic oceanic species and 126 species of shore fishes known from both the tropical eastern Pacific (TEP) and the central and West Pacific. The broad distributions of 19 of 39 circumglo...

Population genetic theory and empirical comparisons of sister and sympatric marine species show that life history traits related to dispersal, such as pelagic duration (PD), should affect the frequency and spatial scale of migration, and thus influence population genetic structure. However, recent global analyses have concluded that PD is poorly correlated with marine population genetic structu...

Evidence increasingly suggests that sub-Saharan Africa is at the center of human evolution and understanding routes of dispersal "out of Africa" is thus becoming increasingly important. The Sahara Desert is considered by many to be an obstacle to these dispersals and a Nile corridor route has been proposed to cross it. Here we provide evidence that the Sahara was not an effective barrier and in...

Aim Understanding how climate refugia and migration over great distances have facilitated species survival during past changes is crucial for evaluating contemporary threats to biodiversity, particularly in the face of dispersal barriers. We address this longstanding question on refugial origins post-glacial development mesic forests. Location Pacific Northwest, North America. Taxon Mountain he...

It has been hypothesized that biogeographical boundaries are a feature of Burkholderia pseudomallei ecology, and they impact the epidemiology of melioidosis on a global scale. This study examined the relatedness of B. pseudomallei sourced from islands in the Torres Strait of Northern Australia to determine if the geography of isolated island communities is a determinant of the organisms' disper...

Knowledge of larval behaviours of sessile marine invertebrates from release to recruitment and of the role these behaviours play in determining adult distributions is limited. In manipulative experiments using larvae from the Great Barrier Reef sponge Rhopaloeides odorabile, we quantified larval behaviours associated with vertical migration, phototaxis and swimming ability. We also measured set...

We studied population genetic differentiation in the sympatric Sonoran Desert cactophilic flies Drosophila pachea, D. mettleri and D. nigrospiracula across their continental and peninsular ranges. These flies show marked differences in ecology and behaviour including dispersal distances and host cactus specialization. Examination of a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I g...

Chagas disease is a vector-borne disease endemic in Latin America. Triatoma infestans, a common vector of this disease, has recently expanded its range into rapidly developing cities of Latin America. We aim to identify the environmental features that affect the colonization and dispersal of T. infestans in an urban environment. We amplified 13 commonly used microsatellites from 180 T. infestan...