THE PHYLOGEOGRAPHY OF THE DARKLING BEETLE, HEGETER POLITUS, IN THE EASTERN CANARY-ISLANDS

We investigated the phylogeography of Hegeter politus, a saprophagous, flightless darkling beetle endemic to the eastern Canary Islands, usi ng a fragment of the mitochondrial COI gene. Distance and parsimony ba sed gene trees of the mitotypes identified revealed a striking associa tion between mitotype clades and sampling locations. The branching ord er of the clades suggested that the colonization of the islands by Heg eter politus proceeded from the southern part of Fuerteventura in a no rth-northeast direction to Lanzarote and the smaller islands. Based on this, a colonization scenario compatible with the reported geological ages and volcanisms of the various parts of the islands has been prop osed. The high divergence of the beetles collected from the extreme so uth of Fuerteventura (the Jandia peninsula) from all other samples has led us to propose that they may be from a new species that has not be en described previously. The ecological isolation of Jandia from the r est of Fuerteventura by the sand dunes that cover its narrow isthmus i n the north, and the existence of many plant and animal endemisms uniq ue to Jandia, lend supportive evidence to our proposal. The similariti es between the evolution of island endemics in the Hawaiian and Canary archipelagos have been discussed. We conclude that many endemics in t he Canary archipelago, like the Hawaiian Islands, are most likely to h ave originated from post-colonization differentiation and divergence.