Moorean and Tahitian Partula tree snail ddRAD

Approximately 120 species of Partulidae are recognized with the center of their distribution in a single hotspot archipelago, the Society Islands. These Islands housed 61 endemic partulid species, half of the entire clade, until their recent catastrophic mass extinction by the carnivorous rosy wolf snail Euglandina rosea. A small number of Moorean and Tahitian Partula species endure in the wild either in montane cloud forest at >1,000m in elevation (P. otaheitana on Tahiti), where the predator is relatively ineffective (Gerlach, 1994, 2001), or in Tahitian (P. clara and P. hyalina) or Moorean (P. taeniata) valleys (Lee et al., 2007a, 2009; Bick et al., 2016). The surviving valley populations are a surprise because predation models predicted extirpation of partulid species within three years of contact with the predator (Gerlach, 2001). Previous mitochondrial (mt) studies have robustly linked the sole surviving wild Moorean Partula species, P. taeniata, to its two surviving Tahitian valley congeners: P. clara and P. hyalina. However, details of that linkage are complicated by extensive mt polyphyly. In this study, we phylogenomically investigated the inter-relationships of the three surviving Society Island valley Partula species: P. taeniata (Moorea), P. clara and P. hyalina (Tahiti). Our study highlights the utility and viability of the double digested Restriction Associated DNA sequencing (ddRADseq) technique for museum specimens and their increased resolution of evolutionary patterns.