Abstract
The pattern of human colonization of the islands of the central and eastern Pacific is contentious. Two models have been widely considered: the ‘express train to Polynesia’ and the ‘entangled bank’ hypotheses1,2,3,4. Here I analyse the mitochondrial DNA sequences of the lizard Lipinia noctua, which lives alongside humans on these Pacific islands, with a view to distinguishing between these two hypotheses. From a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence variation, I find that these lizards colonized the central and eastern Pacific as a result of human-mediated dispersal, presumably as stowaways on early Polynesian canoes. The extreme genetic similarity between the different colonies indicates rapid colonization from a single source, which I take as support of the express-train hypothesis.
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Austin, C. Lizards took express train to Polynesia. Nature 397, 113–114 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16365
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/16365
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