Abstract
The Southern Appalachians and adjacent provinces of the southeastern USA are geologically and biologically diverse, with high levels of endemism. Phylogeographic analyses indicate that animals with small distributions in these regions often contain cryptic diversity and that Pleistocene climate fluctuations had significant impacts on their distributions. We studied the phylogeography of Vaejovis carolinianus (Beauvois), a common forest scorpion from the region, to determine if a more widely distributed animal exhibits similar patterns. Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, as well as species distribution models, were used to test biogeographic hypotheses. Results indicate that the species is composed of at least nine geographically structured mitochondrial clades. Seven clades are represented by only a few sampling locations, whereas two clades are much larger and appear to be the result of postglacial range expansion in the plateaus and coastal plains adjacent to the Southern Appalachians. A highly disjunct population from Tunica Hills of Louisiana appears to have been isolated since the Pliocene, rejecting a hypothesis of late glacial migration along the Blufflands escarpment. Nuclear DNA is much less structured, perhaps due to differences in habitat and dispersal capabilities between sexes. Although mitochondrial lineages are quite old, mito-nuclear discordance suggests that lineages have not sorted and that V. carolinianus should be treated as a single genetically diverse species.
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Collection data are provided in Table S1. Genetic data have been uploaded to GenBank (accession numbers MW440706–MW440981 for COI and MW459256–MW459317 for ITS-2).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Alexsis Powell and Haley Grimason for assisting with laboratory procedures. Carlos Santibáñez-López assisted with the maximum likelihood analysis. Danilo Harms and an anonymous reviewer provided important comments that improved the paper. Jeremy Keith Casto assisted MRG in the field and we dedicate this article to his memory.
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Funding was provided by a grant from the Connecticut State University American Association of University Professors (CSU-AAUP) to MRG and a Millsaps College Faculty Development Grant to BEH. The DMNS Zoology Department provided travel funds to PEC.
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M.R.G. and P.E.C designed the project; M.R.G, B.E.H, and P.E.C. collected the specimens; A.M.S., P.E.C., and M.R.G. generated the sequence data; M.R.G and E.L.G analyzed the data; M.R.G. and E.L.G. led the writing.
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Graham, M.R., Garcia, E.L., Hendrixson, B.E. et al. Pliocene origins, Pleistocene refugia, and postglacial range expansions in southern devil scorpions (Vaejovidae: Vaejovis carolinianus). Org Divers Evol 21, 575–590 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-021-00505-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-021-00505-z