Conceived and designed the experiments: PT. Performed the experiments: PT IP. Analyzed the data: PT. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: NB PT IP CM BN. Wrote the paper: NB PT IP CM BN.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The southern African tick shell,
We investigated two alternative hypotheses explaining the difference in shell size: a)
The decrease in fossil shell size from Pleistocene to Holocene was likely due to increased temperatures as a result of climate change at the beginning of the present interglacial period. We hypothesise that the sizes of
The southern African tick shell,
Sampling localities (A–J) from which specimens of
The present-day geographical range of
Morphological differentiation in molluscs is often the result of phenotypic plasticity rather than genetics
A total of 1230 specimens of
A minimum spanning network of mtDNA haplotypes was constructed using statistical parsimony
To determine whether
A mutation rate to convert both τ and
Shell lengths of specimens from all 10 estuaries/lagoons were measured as described previously
Consensus sequences of 600 and 483 nucleotides were obtained for
A statistical parsimony haplotype network constructed from combined partial mtDNA
The mismatch distribution of the
Shells of extant populations from the west coast (Olifants Estuary and Langebaan Lagoon) were significantly larger than those from the south and east coasts, and individuals whose shells exceeded 10 mm in length were only found in these two populations. The largest 75% of the shells from the Olifants Estuary population were not significantly different in size from the MSA fossil shells (
Shell sizes of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) specimens of
In southern Africa, most of the examined coastal invertebrate species that, like
The rejection of the hypotheses that
Plots of IM posterior probability distributions. Marginal posterior probability distributions for three parameter estimates from one of five IM runs scaled by the neutral mutation rate, including the population size parameter θ calculated for the southwestern lineage (θ1), southeastern lineage (θ2), and the ancestral lineage prior to divergence (θA), time since population divergence (
(0.60 MB TIF)
This is a contribution from the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme. We are grateful to Henning Winker and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.