A short-range endemic species from south-eastern Atlantic Rain Forest shows deep signature of historical events: phylogeography of harvestmen Acutisoma longipes (Arachnida: Opiliones)

Abstract

The Brazilian Atlantic Rain Forest is amongst the most diverse biomes in the world, but the processes that shaped its biodiversity are still poorly understood. We used one mitochondrial and two nuclear markers to evaluate the phylogeographic patterns of the endemic harvestman Acutisoma longipes and its closely related species to investigate the biogeographic history of this biome. The results showed low intrapopulation diversity and strong population structure, suggesting poor dispersion amongst locations. Phylogenetic analyses pointed to three main mitochondrial lineages congruent with the geomorphology of the south-eastern region of Brazil (Serra do Mar, Serra da Mantiqueira, and interior plateau). These older divergences occurred in the middle-Neogene, suggesting that events in this period drove the diversification of the species, but Quaternary events also affected the populations locally. We detected some congruence between A. longipes demographic patterns and the areas of endemism delimited for harvestmen, suggesting that some regions of the distribution could have been more stable in the past (especially in Serra da Mantiqueira). Our findings corroborate that harvestmen are a suitable group for the study of ancient biogeographic events in the Atlantic Rain Forest, even at small-scale ranges. Acutisoma hamatum is here considered as a new junior synonym of A. longipes.

Keywords:

• areas of endemism
• biogeography
• Goniosomatinae
• Gonyleptidae
• Neotropics
• population structure
• Serra do Mar
• Serra da Mantiqueira

Acknowledgements

We thank H. Batalha-Filho for the suggestions on the first version of this work and K. Sheridan for the English review. We are grateful to Prof. Elliot Shubert, Dr Dimitar Dimitrov, and two anonymous reviewers for the valuable contribution to this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2017.1361479.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) [grant number 2012/02969-6 and 2013/50297-0]; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) [grant number 304933/2014-7 and 477383/2013-0]; National Science Foundation (NSF) [grant number DOB 1343578] and NASA.