Wolbachia are among the most prevalent and widespread endosymbiotic bacteria on Earth. Wolbachia 's success in infecting an enormous number of arthropod species is attributed to two features: the range of phenotypes they induce in their hosts, and their ability to switch between host species. Whilst much progress has been made in elucidating their induced phenotypes, our understanding of Wolbachia host‐shifting is still very l...

Summary Wolbachia is one of the most successful endosymbiotic bacteria of arthropods. Known as the ‘master of manipulation’, Wolbachia can induce a wide range of phenotypes in its host that can have far‐reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences and may be exploited for disease and pest control. However, our knowledge of Wolbachia' s distribution and the infection rate is unevenly distributed across arthropod groups suc...

Aim Geographical and climatic barriers to organismal dispersal and distribution play a major role in speciation. We use a sister‐pair of widespread savanna trees ( M elaleuca argentea and M . fluviatilis ) to test the influence of putative barriers on divergence within and between species across an otherwise continuous landscape. Location The A ustralian monsoon tropics ( AMT ). Methods Chloroplast and nuclear DNA sequences we...

We present a new, broadly applicable measure of the spatial restriction of phylogenetic diversity, termed phylogenetic endemism (PE). PE combines the widely used phylogenetic diversity and weighted endemism measures to identify areas where substantial components of phylogenetic diversity are restricted. Such areas are likely to be of considerable importance for conservation. PE has a number of desirable properties not combined...

Aim Phylogenies are increasingly being used to attempt to answer biogeographical questions. However, a reliance on tree topology alone has emerged without consideration of earth processes or the biology of the organisms in question. Most ancestral‐state optimization methods have inherent problems, including failure to take account of asymmetry, such as unequal probabilities of losses and gains, and the lack of use of independe...