Abstract
Most warm-adapted Central European species are thought to have survived ice ages exclusively in Mediterranean refugia. During recent years, this point of view has been questioned. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that extra-Mediterranean refugia also played a role in warm-adapted insect species and selected the chalk-hill blue, Polyommatus coridon. We sequenced two mitochondrial loci (COI, CR) in 150 individuals from 30 populations covering nearly the complete range. Minimum spanning networks and other statistical analyses concordantly revealed four genetic lineages with strong phylogeographic signal: a western group in Italy, France and western/central Germany, an eastern lineage in the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Basin and eastern Central Europe, an Alpine group with populations in the Alps and southern Germany and a Pyrenean group. Our results are generally consistent with previous analyses for P. coridon based on allozymes and DNA sequences, but provide additional insights. We propose that these four lineages have evolved during allopatry in different glacial refugia, two in typical Mediterranean refugia (Apennines and Balkan Peninsulas), but two in extra-Mediterranean areas south of the Alps and Pyrenees. This supports survival of warm-adapted organisms in these regions in close geographic proximity to the refugia of high mountain species.
Highlights
The group of continental species includes the majority of taxa that previously have been assumed to be Siberian or Manchurian elements
This point of view has largely been confirmed for arctic-alpine species, but the situation seems to be more complex in purely alpine species
We found 38 haplotypes for Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) (150 individuals) and 76 haplotypes for Control Region (CR) (147 individuals)
Summary
The group of continental species includes the majority of taxa that previously have been assumed to be Siberian or Manchurian elements For these species, postglacial expansion from Central or East Asia to Europe had been postulated[13]. See Schmitt & Varga14), and the possibility of glacial survival in European extra-Mediterranean refugia has been proposed[15] The existence of such retreats in Europe has been demonstrated by genetic analyses for a variety of taxa over the last two decades (reviewed in Schmitt & Varga[14]). The main process formerly discussed for arctic-alpine and alpine disjunct species is a massive spread during the cold stages of the Pleistocene leading to large continental distributions, followed by inter- and postglacial retreat to high mountain systems or the Arctic realm[4,16]. The importance of peri-Alpine areas as retreats for warm-adapted species, i.e. in close geographic proximity to high mountain species, is mostly unknown, and so far, apart from the butterfly Euphydryas aurinia[35], no example exists for invertebrate peri-Alpine refugia
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