Phylogeography reveals the complex impact of the Last Glacial Maximum on New Zealand’s terrestrial biota

ABSTRACT

We review the major phylogeographic patterns in Aotearoa New Zealand’s terrestrial flora and fauna that have been associated with the Ōtira Glaciation of the Pleistocene, the end of which coincides with the global Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). We focus on (1) the complexity of biogeographic histories of New Zealand species, with LGM-driven phenomena overlaying the impacts of mountain-building and other drivers of phylogeographic structure; (2) the locations of glacial refugia and sets of taxa which may have shared refugia; and (3) the role of glaciation in driving diversification. We end with a brief focus on the next directions, including what can we learn about New Zealand’s glacial history by expanding our phylogeographic toolbox to include genomic methods and hypothesis-driven inference methods. We provide follow-up questions which take advantage of the wealth of phylogeographic data for New Zealand.

KEYWORDS:

• Phylogeography
• Pleistocene
• glacial refugia
• biogeographic line
• Last Glacial Maximum
• Otira glaciation

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Thomas Buckley and Graham Wallis for the invitation to write this review, and Richard Leschen and Chris Simon for helpful suggestions which significantly improved the manuscript. We also thank Dineesha Premathilake and Phoebe Fu for assistance with the literature search, and Matt McGlone and Rewi Newnham for assistance with Figure 1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).