Distinguishing between dispersal and vicariance: A novel approach using anti-tropical taxa across the fish Tree of Life

Aim: Anti-tropical taxa are species split by the tropics into disjunct northern and southern populations. These distributions occur throughout the Tree of Life, but the mechanisms proposed to drive this pattern are debated and generally fit into two categories: dispersal and vicariance. Here we quantitatively test the prevalence of dispersal and vicariance as plausible drivers of anti-tropical marine distributions using intra-specific anti-tropical marine fishes as a model system.
Location: Primarily Indo-Pacific.
Major Taxa Studied: Marine fishes.
Methods: To test between dispersal and vicariance in latitudinally disjunct marine fishes, we used an ecological niche modeling framework to predict the spatiotemporal suitability of tropical habitats during contemporary and glacial time periods. Three different model configurations were used per species to test: (1) presence of contemporary tropical suitable habitat for northern populations, (2) the same for southern populations, (3) pres...