Biogeography of goby lineages (Gobiiformes: Gobioidei): origin, invasions and extinction throughout the Cenozoic

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Abstract
Aim: To combine a time‐calibrated phylogeny with distributional, fossil and geomorphological data to infer the patterns of lineage origins and biogeography among gobies.Location: Global marine areas (Indo‐West Pacific, Western Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Atlantic and Eastern Pacific) throughout the Cenozoic.Methods: I inferred a molecular phylogeny usingbeast, simultaneously calibrating nodes for Gobiidae, Gobionellidae and their combined clade. I used that phylogeny, coupled with current range data, to reconstruct historical distributions with the R module BioGeoBEARSunder both a dispersal, extinction and cladogenesis (DEC) model and an augmented model including founder effect speciation (DEC+J). I then compared model fits for placing the ancestral node of Gobiidae + Gobiidae at varying reef hotspots throughout the Cenozoic: the West Tethys (Mediterranean), Western Indian Ocean or Indo‐West Pacific.Results: Goby lineages arose over a 12–13 million year period in the late Eocene, followed by repeated invasions of the Eastern Pacific, Atlantic and Mediterranean from an ancestral Indo‐West Pacific distribution. Optimization withDEC+J is preferred toDEC, but constraining the root of the phylogeny with a West Tethyan (Mediterranean) or Western Indian Ocean distribution does not result in significantly different model fits underDEC+J.Main conclusions: In Gobiidae, several lineages migrated through the West Tethys to the Atlantic, followed by extinction in the Mediterranean. In contrast, lineages of Gobionellidae in the Mediterranean did not spread beyond the eastern North Atlantic. Gobionellidae invaded the Eastern Pacific by distinct routes in different lineages, either from the Caribbean through the open Isthmus of Panama or around the northern Pacific Rim. Eastern Pacific Gobiidae are younger and derived from tropical Atlantic clades. Although the reconstructed ancestral area of gobies is the Indo‐West Pacific, fossils indicate that gobioids were present in the West Tethys region throughout the Oligocene and Miocene, including taxa that are not known from that area today.
Funding Information
  • W. M. Keck and R. M. Parsons Foundations
  • Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

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