Multiple lineages of hyper-diverse Zopheridae beetles survived the New Zealand Oligocene Drowning

Aim: During the late Oligocene (23 mya) the New Zealand landmass was reduced to approximately 18% of its current area. It has been hypothesized that this event, known as the Oligocene Drowning, caused population bottlenecking and mass extinction. Using phylogenetic methods, we examine the effect of this and other environmental events on the hyper-diverse Zopheridae beetles (162 morpho-species), which largely inhabit leaf litter and dead wood.
Location: New Zealand
Taxon: Zopheridae, Coleoptera
Methods: Here we use a fossil-calibrated phylogenetic tree estimated from mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 and nuclear large subunit rRNA genes to identify monophyletic New Zealand zopherid lineages and date the age of these lineages. We used Bayesian diversification models (compound Poisson process on mass-extinction times) to test the hypothesis that the New Zealand zopherids underwent a mass extinction in the late Oligocene followed by an increase in speciation rate in the Miocene. ...