Islands in the desert: Species delimitation and evolutionary history of Pseudotetracha tiger beetles (Coleoptera: Cicindelidae: Megacephalini) from Australian salt lakes.

The Australian salt lakes are a natural archipelago-like laboratory for investigating evolutionary and population processes. Their environmental conditions have not undergone relevant changes since the aridification of Australia 10-5 million years ago. The genus Pseudotetracha, a group of nocturnal tiger beetles found on these remote salt lakes, includes 20 described species. Recent studies based on molecular markers and cytogenetics hinted at the existence of cryptic species within this group. Here we use various species delimitation algorithms to detect a high number of cryptic and undescribed taxa, and challenge the validity of the taxonomic characters traditionally used for discerning species in this group. Our analyses show that the divergence dates of the clades, between 10 and 5 million years ago, correspond to the period in which Australia was undergoing an aridification process that probably isolated the ancestral Pseudotetracha populations to individual lakes or palaeodrainage basins. This implies an important role of the isolation, produced by the aridification of Australia, in the speciation and divergence of Pseudotetracha, which underwent a remarkable radiation as the populations became geographically restricted.