G the cooling effects from the ACC, top to HBPR.2.5.1 a drier and more seasonal climate AEM.01433-15 by the onset with the Miocene ( 23 Ma). Rainforest habitats appropriate for Austropurcellia have been widespread throughout the Australian continent throughout the early Miocene, prior to they were largely replacedNew species of Austropurcellia, cryptic short-range endemic mite harvestmen…by sclerophyllous vegetation for the duration of a late Tertiary phase of long-term climate change and aridification (Adam 1992, Truswell 1993, Schneider et al. 1998, Crisp et al. 2004, Byrne et al. 2008). Miocene climatic alterations happen to be invoked as a putative driver of speciation processes in other ancient Australian lineages. For instance, phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses of Australian Archaeidae (assassin spiders), an additional limited-dispersal temperate Gondwanan arachnid group identified in Queensland, point to evolutionary divergence as a result of Miocene aridification events (Rix and Harvey 2012). Austropurcellia offers a relevant point of comparison with this group, and perform in preparation by the authors will examine tempo and age of speciation events inside the genus. The WT is considered to be a model system for studying biogeographic processes that shape rainforest diversity for the reason that it consists of disproportionately significant percentages of Australia’s fauna (in spite of comprising only 0.12 in the continent by area), also as unusually high rates of endemism (Nix 1991, Williams journal.pone.0054688 2006, Rix and Harvey 2012). Palynological records in the WT suggest that substantial range contractions and expansions of forest habitats have occurred because of far more current climate modify. In unique, angiosperm rainforests have been replaced by sclerophyllous or drier gymnosperm-dominated forests for the duration of Pleistocene glacial and interglacial cycles before the establishment from the present climate (Kershaw 1994, Graham et al. 2006, Bell et al. 2007). Rainforests have persisted in some regions with the WT considerably more consistently than others, major to identification of prospective species refugia by Webb and Tracey (1981), which take the type of smaller upland rainforest fragments scattered all through areas of warmer and drier habitats (Schneider et al. 1998, Graham et al. 2006, Graham et al. 2010). Mite harvestmen only have to have tiny patches of appropriate habitat to persist, and are hence in a position to survive these extreme rainforest contraction events, Its content validity prior to the actual information collection. Six well trained making them an ideal group to study historical biogeography and speciation within the WT (e.g. Boyer et al. 2005, 2007b, Clouse and Giribet 2007, 2010, Boyer and Giribet 2009, Giribet et al. 2012, Boyer et al. 2015). Boyer et al. (2016) modeled suitable climatic conditions for Austropurcellia and projected them onto paleoclimate data layers from time slices going back towards the Final Glacial Maximum (LGM). They identified that variations in LGM climatic suitability across the WT were a powerful predictor of present-day diversity, outperforming current climatic suitability. This suggests that the LGM climatic refugia acted as museums of biodiversity, preserving lineages through a restrictive climatic regime and shaping the distribution of biodiversity across the WT that is certainly noticed now. Mite harvestmen are recognized to possess pretty low dispersal prices, with species even in well-surveyed locations commonly found in only a couple of localities inside a 50-km radius (Boyer and Giribet 2009, Boyer et al. 2015, Clouse et al. 2016) (Figs 1?). Preceding phylogenetic and biogeographic work has indicated that unique closely rela.