Neat patterns with a messy history: savannah refuges in northern Australia

Abstract

Phylogeography aims to investigate the evolutionary history of taxa using the geographical distribution of genetic lineages. This requires substantial input from comparative data on fossil distributions and climatic and geological changes that may have lead to modern pattern. This task may be relatively straightforward in systems that involve refugial habitats, or static habitats and emergent barriers. However, in many systems there are significant challenges to explaining modern patterns, and these have often been ignored or sidelined in past studies. Northern Australia is such a system, and has been subject to large-scale repetitive movements of habitats superimposed on the development of arid barriers and fluctuating sea levels. Phylogeographic methods in combination with detailed environmental reconstructions and ancient DNA may provide a revealing case study of a region likely to yield many complex patterns of evolution.