Tropical islands are renowned as natural laboratories for evolutionary study. Lineage radiations across tropical archipelagos are ideal systems for investigating how colonization, speciation, and extinction processes shape biodiversity patterns. The expansion of the island thrush across the Indo-Pacific represents one of the largest yet most perplexing island radiations of any songbird species. The island thrush exhibits a complex mosaic of pronounced plumage variation across its range and is arguably the world’s most polytypic bird. It is a sedentary species largely restricted to mountain forests, yet it has colonized a vast island region spanning a quarter of the globe. We conducted a comprehensive sampling of island thrush populations and obtained genome-wide SNP data, which we used to reconstruct its phylogeny, population structure, gene flow, and demographic history. The island thrush evolved from migratory Palearctic ancestors and radiated explosively across the Indo-Pacific during the Pleistocene, with numerous instances of gene flow between populations. Its bewildering plumage variation masks a biogeographically intuitive stepping stone colonization path from the Philippines through the Greater Sundas, Wallacea, and New Guinea to Polynesia. The island thrush’s success in colonizing Indo-Pacific mountains can be understood in light of its ancestral mobility and adaptation to cool climates; however, shifts in elevational range, degree of plumage variation and apparent dispersal rates in the eastern part of its range raise further intriguing questions about its biology.
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This content will become publicly available on August 29, 2025
Phylogenomics of a genus of "Great Speciators" reveals rampant incomplete lineage sorting, gene flow, and mitochondrial capture in island systems
The flora and fauna of island systems, especially those in the Indo-Pacific, are renowned for their high diversification rates and outsized contribution to the development of evolutionary theories. The total diversity of geographic radiations of many Indo-Pacific fauna is often incompletely sampled in phylogenetic studies due to the difficulty in obtaining single island endemic forms across the Pacific and the relatively poor performance of degraded DNA when using museum specimens for inference of evolutionary relationships. New methods for production and analysis of genome-wide datasets sourced from degraded DNA are facilitating insights into the complex evolutionary histories of these influential island faunas. Here, we leverage whole genome resequencing (20X average coverage) and extensive sampling of all taxonomic diversity within Todiramphus kingfishers, a rapid radiation of largely island endemic Great Speciators. We find that whole genome datasets do not outright resolve the evolutionary relationships of this clade: four types of molecular markers (UCEs, BUSCOs, SNPs, and mtDNA) and tree building methods did not find a single well-supported and concordant species-level topology. We then uncover evidence of widespread incomplete lineage sorting and both ancient and contemporary gene flow and demonstrate how these factors contribute to conflicting evolutionary histories. Our complete taxonomic sampling allowed us to further identify a novel case of mitochondrial capture between two allopatric species, suggesting a potential historical (but since lost) hybrid zone as islands were successively colonized. Taken together, these results highlight how increased genomic and taxon sampling can reveal complex evolutionary patterns in rapid island radiations.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2112467
- PAR ID:
- 10537990
- Publisher / Repository:
- bioRxiv
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Institution:
- bioRxiv
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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