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

Abstract

New Zealand biogeography has been dominated by the knowledge that its geophysical history is continental in nature. The continental crust (Zealandia) from which New Zealand is formed broke from Gondwanaland ca 80 Ma, and there has existed a pervading view that the native biota is primarily a product of this long isolation. However, molecular studies of terrestrial animals and plants in New Zealand indicate that many taxa arrived since isolation of the land, and that diversification in most groups is relatively recent. This is consistent with evidence for species turnover from the fossil record, taxonomic affinity, tectonic evidence and observations of biological composition and interactions. Extinction, colonization and speciation have yielded a biota in New Zealand which is, in most respects, more like that of an oceanic archipelago than a continent.

'Moa's Ark' or 'Goodbye Gondwana': is the origin of New Zealand's terrestrial invertebrate fauna ancient, recent or both?

“…A more recent article on broader Opiliones phylogeny incorporated samples of the three New Zealand pettalid genera and the two Australian genera, and used a parametric rate-smoothing approach to estimate the origin of Aoraki at 55 Mya (AE21), Rakaia at 118 Mya (AE22), a divergence between Neopurcellia and Rakaia at 150 Mya (AE25), and a divergence of Austropurcellia and Aoraki at 167 Mya (AE27) (Giribet et al in press). All these ages are much older than 22 Mya, contradicting the suggestion by Goldberg et al (2008) that the New Zealand pettalids arrived within the past 5 million years.…”

“…Sanmartín and Ronquist 2004;Trewick et al 2007;Goldberg et al 2008), but a Gondwanan distribution is not sufficient for accepting a hypothesis of vicariance for New Zealand's fauna (Trewick et al 2007). Here, we focus on four groups of terrestrial invertebrates that plausibly arrived in New Zealand before the 22 Mya Oligocene drowning barrier: mite harvestmen, Craterostigmus centipedes, stone centipedes, and peripatus or velvet worms.…”

“…The 'Moa's Ark' paradigm is based on charismatic examples of supposed vicariance in ratite birds, chironomid midges, and the Southern beech, or on the presence of ancient relicts such as the tuatara and leiopelmatid frogs, with no close extant relatives outside of New Zealand (Trewick et al 2007). However, recent reinterpretations of New Zealand's geology and its fauna have led to very different conclusions, framed as the 'Goodbye Gondwana' paradigm (McGlone 2005), which questions the antiquity of the land surface and thus of its terrestrial biota, and postulates that virtually every terrestrial group has reached New Zealand through fortuitous over-water dispersal during the past 22 million years (Landis et al 2008), with subsequent diversification (Waters and Craw 2006;Trewick et al 2007;Goldberg et al 2008).…”

“…The same authors do concede (p. 3565) that '[m]ore work on arthropods is needed; they are likely to include recent and ancient dispersers as well as Gondwanan relicts (Gressitt 1961(Gressitt , 1970Boyer & Giribet 2007)'. In another paper Goldberg et al (2008) review the molecular evidence for several New Zealand terrestrial animals, concluding that the New Zealand biota is 'in most respects, more like that of an oceanic archipelago than a continent' (p. 3319). Few have questioned this new trend in interpretation of New Zealand biogeography (Knapp et al 2007;Edgecombe and Giribet 2008;Boyer and Giribet 2009;Allwood et al 2010).…”

Introduction. Evolution on Pacific islands: Darwin's legacy

“…Each of these collates and attempts to synthesize molecular studies of phylogenetics, biogeography and phylogeography of terrestrial animals in New Caledonia (Grandcolas et al 2008), New Zealand (Goldberg et al 2008), French Polynesia (Gillespie et al 2008), the Galápagos Islands (Parent et al 2008) and the Hawaiian Islands (Cowie & Holland 2008). Each deals with the origins of the various components of the faunas as well as the intraarchipelago biogeography and phylogeography, but are limited to the taxa and scope of the research papers they review.…”