Bharti Dharapuram and Jahnavi Joshi and other researchers, studied diversity and endemism in centipedes, a group of ancient predatory soil arthropods, across the biodiversity hotspot of Western Ghats (WG), India. What did they find? They obtained phylogenetic measures of diversity by including evolutionary relationships between species. To this, they added information on species distributions to measure phylogenetic endemism, which helps in identifying areas with unique diversity.
The scientists of CCMB-CSIR found that phylogenetic diversity decreases at higher latitudes, with several evolutionarily distant species occurring in the southern western ghats. This may be due to variation in environment or past climatic stability along the mountain range. The team also identified two hotspots of phylogenetic endemism – these areas harbour evolutionarily unique species with restricted distributions. This may be due to the existence of a past rainforest refuge in the southern WG and adaptations to unique habitats in the northern western ghats.