One important issue relevant to understanding the high floristic diversity and endemism of the SWBP hotspot is the role played by the Nullarbor Plain in driving divergences between eastern and western species.
(3) To what extent does the gap between Kosciuszko and the Bogong High Plains represent a primary divergence point?
These results are strongly suggestive of rapid divergence of coastal plain populations with strong selection that is consistent with incipient ecological speciation [16].
b star signifies significant difference between plain descriptor & plain versions.
Despite this pattern of generally high regional divergence, however, the Bogong High Plains and Mt Buffalo showed low differentiation.
We were unable to give an estimated divergence time between populations from the Bogong High Plains and Kosciuszko as there was no phylogenetic split based on CO1 data.
In contrast to the CO1 phylogeny, ITS1 sequences showed divergence between the Kosciuszko region and the Bogong High Plains (separated by the Murray River valley), with populations from each region represented by one primary haplotype.
European refugia have probably been isolated by Alpine glaciers, the Alps, Carpathians, Dinaric Alps or repeated marine-flooding of the Crati-Sibari plaiNorthrth Calabria, [ 45]) during the Pleistocene period leading to allopatric divergences of European lineages.
The question remains whether the sequence divergence between alleles is a better functional predictor for immunocompetence than the plain number of alleles.
From both sequences and microsatellite data, we suggest that there is significant divergence between K. tristis populations from Mt Kosciuszko and the Bogong High Plains.
For example, the skink Egernia guthega, an alpine endemic, shows an average 2.2% mitochondrial (ND4) sequence divergence between a population from Kosciuszko and three populations from the Bogong High Plains.
