Single Origin of the Mascarene Stick Insects: Ancient Radiation on Sunken Islands?

Background: The study of islands as model systems plays a key role in understanding many evolutionary processes. Knowledge of the historical events leading to present-day island communities is pivotal for exploring fundamental mechanisms of speciation and adaptation. The remote Mascarene archipelago (Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues), considered to be the product of an age-progressive trend of north-to-south volcanic activity in the Indian Ocean, hosts a remarkably diverse, endemic and threatened concentration of flora and fauna that has traditionally been considered to be biogeographically related to Madagascar and Africa. To explore the evolutionary diversity of the Mascarene stick insects (Phasmatodea), we constructed a global phylogeny from approximately 2.4 kb of mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data of more than 120 species representing all major phasmatodean lineages.

Results: Based on the obtained time-calibrated molecular tree we demonstrate that the current phasmid community of the Mascarene archipelago, which consists of members of four presumably unrelated traditional subfamilies, is the result of a single ancient dispersal event from Australasia and started radiating between 16-29 million years ago, significantly predating the age of Mauritius (8-10 million years).

Conclusions: We propose that the Mascarene stick insects diversified on landmasses now eroded away, presumably to the north of Mauritius. In consequence, ancient islands have probably persisted in the Indian Ocean until the emergence of Mauritius and not only served as stepping stones for colonisation events during sea-level lowstands, but as long-lasting cradles of evolution. These ancient landmasses most likely allowed for adaptive speciation and served as significant sources of diversity that contributed to the biomes of the Mascarene archipelago and the megadiverse Madagascar.