How the African house gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia) conquered the world.

ABSTRACT: Alien species are among the greatest threats to biodiversity, but the evolutionary origins of invasiveness remain obscure. We conducted the first range-wide sampling of Hemidactylus mabouia from more than 120 localities across Africa, Madagascar and the Neotropics to understand the evolutionary history of one of the most widely distributed, invasive vertebrates in the world. We used a multi-locus phylogeny, species delimitation, fossil-calibrated timetree, ancestral area reconstruction and species distribution models (SDMs) to determine how many putative species-level lineages are contained within H. mabouia, the timing and tempo of diversification, and the origins of commensality-providing insights into the evolutionary origins of invasiveness. Our analyses suggest 'H. ma

SUBMITTER: Agarwal I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8334833 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature