Mary Morgan-Richards

Massey University · Ecology group

We have sequenced, assembled, and analyzed the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes and transcriptomes of Potamopyrgus estuarinus and Potamopyrgus kaitunuparaoa , two prosobranch snail species native to New Zealand that together span the continuum from estuary to freshwater. These two species are the closest known relatives of the freshwater species P...

The stable oxygen (δ18Oshell) and carbon (δ13Cshell) isotope ratios retrieved from the carbonate shell of terrestrial gastropods can be used as an environmental proxy and are thought to reflect dietary composition and ambient climatic conditions (e.g. precipitation amount, humidity, temperature). Here, we generate high-resolution isotopic profiles...

Aim Species living on steep environmental gradients are expected to be especially sensitive to global climate change, but little is known about the factors influencing their responses to contemporary warming. Here, we investigate the influence of climate on the biogeography of three alpine species with overlapping ranges. Location Te Waipounamu (S...

Unlabelled: Clear delimitation of management units is essential for effective management of invasive species. Analysis of population genetic structure of target species can improve identification and interpretation of natural and artificial barriers to dispersal. In Aotearoa New Zealand where the introduced ship rat (Rattus rattus) is a major thre...

Insects that are freeze-tolerant start freezing at high sub-zero temperatures and produce small ice crystals. They do this using ice-nucleating agents that facilitate intercellular ice growth and prevent formation of large crystals where they can damage tissues. In Aotearoa/New Zealand the majority of cold adapted invertebrates studied survive free...

The conservation status of all 162 known taxa of Orthoptera (wētā, crickets and grasshoppers) in Aotearoa New Zealand was reassessed using the New Zealand Threat Classification System (NZTCS). A list of these taxa is presented, along with a statistical summary and brief notes on the most important changes since the previous assessment. This list re...

Major aridification events in Australia during the Pliocene may have had significant impact on the distribution and structure of widespread species. To explore the potential impact of Pliocene and Pleistocene climate oscillations, we estimated the timing of population fragmentation and past connectivity of the currently isolated but morphologically...

Brachaspis nivalis, Sigaus australis and Paprides nitidus are grasshopper species endemic to Aotearoa, New Zealand where they are sympatric in several regions of South Island. On mountains of Kā Tiritiri o te Moana (Southern Alps), B. nivalis is more abundant on scree/rock habitat, whereas S. australis and P. nitidus are prevalent in alpine tussock...

Major aridification events in Australia during the Pliocene may have had significant impact on the distribution and structure of widespread species. To explore the potential impact of Pliocene and Pleistocene climate oscillations we estimated the timing of population fragmentation and past connectivity of the currently isolated but morphologically...

Brachaspis nivalis , Sigaus australis and Paprides nitidus are grasshopper species endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand where they are sympatric in several regions of South Island. On mountains of Kā Tiritiri o te Moana (Southern Alps), B. nivalis is most abundant on scree/rock habitat whereas S. australis and P. nitidus are prevalent in alpine tussock...

Connectivity among populations of widespread marine species is expected to be correlated with their dispersal potential but the evolution of reproductive barriers may account for variations in spatial genetic patterns. Marine benthic hydroid species are traditionally considered widespread, with long-distance rafting presumably increasing their disp...

OPEN ACCESS https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13070567 The mayfly Acanthophlebia cruentata of Aotearoa, New Zealand, is widespread in Te Ika-a-Māui North Island streams, but has never been collected from South Island despite land connection during the last glacial maximum. Population structure of this mayfly might reflect re-colonisation after volcani...

Body size is perhaps the most fundamental property of an organism and is central to ecology at multiple scales, yet obtaining accurate estimates of ecologically meaningful size metrics, such as body mass, is often impractical. Allometric scaling and mass-to-mass relationships have been used as alternative approaches to model the expected body mass...

Wildlife sanctuaries in Aotearoa/New Zealand involve community groups that often prefer using non-lethal monitoring methods for invertebrates. We examined one method for monitoring tree wētā with the aim of improving monitoring design. Pest management at our study site did not vary for 10 years before our study and remained unchanged between sampli...

Hybridisation is commonly observed in geographical zones of contact between distinct lineages. These contact zones have long been of interest for biogeographers because they provide insight into the evolutionary and ecological processes that influence the distribution of species as well as the process of speciation. Here we review research on hybri...

The New Zealand alpine cave wētā genus Pharmacus was first described by Pictet & de Saussure (1893) as a monotypic taxon. Three species were added to the genus by Richards in 1972. Here we clarify the status and appearance of all known species of Pharmacus. Based on morphology and mtDNA sequences we determine that the species Pharmacus brewsterensi...

Mountains create steep environmental gradients that are sensitive barometers of climate change. We calibrated 10 statistical models to formulate ensemble ecological niche models for 12 predominantly alpine, flightless grasshopper species in Aotearoa New Zealand, using their current distributions and current conditions. Niche models were then projec...

Chemoreception plays a crucial role in the reproduction and survival of insects, which often rely on their sense of smell and taste to find partners, suitable habitats, and food sources, and to avoid predators and noxious substances. There is a substantial body of work investigating the chemoreception and chemical ecology of Diptera (flies) and Lep...

Two lineages of brushtail possums ( Trichosurus vulpecula ) were historically introduced to Aotearoa New Zealand, and these two subspecies have different phenotypic forms. Despite over 100 years of potential interbreeding, they appear to retain morphological differences, which may indicate reproductive isolation. We examined this using population s...

Placostylinae are a sub-family of terrestrial land snails endemic to the southwest Pacific. Some species are harvested for food, and others are critically endangered. Here we assemble and characterise complete mitochondrial genomes, as well as three nuclear markers (partial 45S ribosomal cassettes and the histone genes H3 and H4) of five snail spec...

Hybridization is an evolutionary process with wide ranging potential outcomes, from providing populations with important genetic variation for adaptation to being a substantial fitness cost leading to extinction. Here, we focused on putative hybridization between two morphologically distinct species of New Zealand grasshopper. We collected Phaulacr...

• Cold‐adapted species are likely to have had more widespread ranges and greater population connectivity during the last glacial period than is the case today. This contrasts with the trend in many species for range and population size to increase during interglacials. • We examined the pattern of genetic and morphological variation within an endem...

Drawing from both Indigenous and “Western” scientific knowledge offers the opportunity to better incorporate ecological systems knowledge into conservation science. Here, we demonstrate a “two‐eyed” approach that weaves Indigenous ecological knowledge (IK) with experimental data to provide detailed and comprehensive information about regional plant...

Wētā (Orthoptera: Anostostomatidae) are a well-recognised component of New Zealand nocturnal ecology, but much of the diversity remains undescribed and only partly characterised. Species of Hemiandrus conceal themselves during the day in soil burrows and most are infrequently encountered, however, one taxon is notorious in some South Island vineyar...

In order to study evolutionary pattern and process we need to be able to accurately identify species and the evolutionary lineages from which they are derived. Determining the concordance between genetic and morphological variation of living populations, and then directly comparing extant and fossil morphological data, provides a robust approach fo...

In New Zealand, 13 flightless species of endemic grasshopper are associated with alpine habitats and freeze tolerance. We examined the phylogenetic relationships of the New Zealand species and a subset of Australian alpine grasshoppers using DNA sequences from the entire mitochondrial genome, nuclear 45S rRNA and Histone H3 and H4 loci. Within our...

Size and shape variations of shells can be used to identify natural phenotypic clusters and thus delimit snail species. Here, we apply both supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms to a geometric morphometric dataset to investigate size and shape variations of the shells of the endemic land snail Placostylus from New Caledonia. We sa...

The genus Pleioplectron was first described by Hutton (1896) and included six New Zealand species. This genus has since had three species moved, one each to the genera Pachyrhamma Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1888, Miotopus Hutton, 1898 and Novoplectron Richards, 1958. Here we clarify the status and appearance of Pleioplectron simplex Hutton, 1896 (incl....

Biodiversity is unevenly distributed worldwide in terms of both species diversity and species endemism. Although centres of endemism are a conservation priority, both patterns and drivers of endemism are poorly understood in New Zealand. Here we explore whether invertebrate species distribution records in New Zealand represent the complete geograph...

The outcome of competition between different reproductive strategies within a single species can be used to infer selective advantage of the winning strategy. Where multiple populations have independently lost or gained sexual reproduction it is possible to investigate whether the advantage is contingent on local conditions. In the New Zealand stic...

The New Zealand stick insect Clitarchus hookeri has both sexual and parthenogenetic (all-female) populations. Sexual populations exhibit a scramble competition mating system with distinctive sex roles, where females are signalers and males are searchers, which may lead to differences in the chemical and morphological traits between sexes. Evidence...

It has recently been suggested that a ‘living fossil’ can be identified because it is both morphologically conservative and exhibits a significantly slower rate of morphological evolution compared to related lineages (Herrera-Flores et al. 2017a). As an exemplar, variation among known rhynchocephalians was investigated, and it was concluded that th...

Powelliphanta is a genus of large carnivorous land snails endemic to New Zealand which display phenotypic variation within comparatively small geographic distances. The diversity within these snails has become a matter of high interest to conservation, as many lineages occupy small (or highly fragmented) ranges that render them vulnerable to ongoin...

Variation in snail shell shape has provided evolutionary biologists with excellent material for the study of local adaptation to local environments. However, the assumption that shell shape variation is evidence of distinct lineages (species) might have led to taxonomic inflation within some gastropod lineages. Here, we compare shell shape variatio...

Comparison of morphological and genetic data from New Zealand forest cave wētā suggests we should recognise the genus Miotopus proposed by Hutton (1898). A new species within this genus is described (Miotopus richardsi sp. nov.). Both Miotopus diversus (Hutton, 1898) and Miotopus richardsi sp. nov. are common in native forests and widespread in New...

The relationship between morphology and inheritance is of perennial interest in evolutionary biology and palaeontology. Using three marine snail genera Penion, Antarctoneptunea and Kelletia, we investigate whether systematics based on shell morphology accurately reflect evolutionary lineages indicated by molecular phylogenetics. Members of these ga...

We studied the population genetics of one population sample of hybrid Mallard x Grey Ducks and their lice in New Zealand. We aimed to document the relationship between ectoparasite load and host phenotype, and test for an association between the mtDNA diversity of the lice and their hosts, which is predicted based on maternal care. We found three f...

Natural hybridization between species provides an opportunity to study the mechanisms that maintain independent lineages and may help us understand the process of speciation. The New Zealand tree wētā species Hemideinathoracica produces F 1 hybrids where it lives in sympatry with two closely related species: Hemideinacrassidens and Hemideinatrewick...

Wolbachia is one of the most widespread intracellular bacteria on earth, estimated to infect between 40 and 66% of arthropod species in most ecosystems that have been surveyed. Their significance rests not only in their vast distribution, but also in their ability to modify the reproductive biology of their hosts, which can ultimately affect geneti...

Rapid anthropogenic climate change has stimulated interest in climate and the impacts it will have on biodiversity around the globe. Many types of biological outcomes are indicated, including local adaptation and extinction, but on steep environmental gradients population responses are most readily detected. One such system exists among the New Zea...

• The range of a species is controlled by biotic and abiotic factors; both could have changed recently due to human activity. • We used environmental modelling, morphometric and genetic data to interpret ecological responses at the species boundary of a pair of New Zealand grasshoppers with very different ranges; one widespread (Phaulacridium margi...

This data article provides genome statistics, phylogenetic networks and trees for a phylogenetic study of Southern Hemisphere Buccinulidae marine snails [1]. We present alternative phylogenetic reconstructions using mitochondrial genomic and 45S nuclear ribosomal cassette DNA sequence data, as well as trees based on short-length DNA sequence data....

First male reported in the genus Acanthoxyla

Mitochondrial DNA sequence is frequently used to infer species’ boundaries, as divergence is relatively rapid when populations are reproductively isolated. However, the shared history of a non-recombining gene naturally leads to correlation of pairwise differences, resulting in mtDNA clusters that might be mistaken for evidence of multiple species....

Under current marine snail taxonomy, the majority of whelks from the Southern Hemisphere (Buccinulidae) are hypothesised to represent a monophyletic clade that has evolved independently from Northern Hemisphere taxa (Buccinidae). Phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial genomic and nuclear ribosomal DNA sequence data indicates that Southern Hemispher...

The evolutionary significance of spatial habitat gaps has been well recognised since Alfred Russel Wallace compared the faunas of Bali and Lombok. Gaps between islands influence population structuring of some species, and flightless birds are expected to show strong partitioning even where habitat gaps are narrow. We examined the population structu...

Recognition of conspecifics is an essential precursor of successful mating. Where related species coexist, species discrimination might be important, but because related species are similar, species signal recognition may actually be low. Chemical cues such as cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) are frequently used by insects to identify suitable sexual...

Secondary sexual dimorphism can make the discrimination of intra and interspecific variation difficult, causing the identification of evolutionary lineages and classification of species to be challenging, particularly in palaeontology. Yet sexual dimorphism is an understudied research topic in dioecious marine snails. We use landmark-based geometri...

We respond to a comment by Allmon WD (2016), who attempted to demonstrate that species are biologically 'real' as justification for retaining the terms 'anagenesis' and 'cladogenesis', which we argue are not necessary for the study of evolutionary biology (Vaux F, Trewick SA & Morgan-Richards M, 2016). Here, we summarize a wealth of literature demo...

TABLE S1 A table of primary and review references for evidence of particular modes of genetic introgression via reproduction (vertical gene transfer (VGT)) and horizontal gene transfer (HGT), most of which are illustrated by single examples in Figure 1. Only a small amount of the available literature is listed, and we deliberately focus upon exampl...

In New Zealand, mice in reserves can complicate the control of mammalian predator invasion by masking scent and eating baits. Eradicating mice allows predator invasions to be more readily detected and managed, but removal of mice is only feasible if recolonisation is rare. We used genetics and morphology to assess whether the mouse population on Wa...

Taxonomy lies at the heart of species conservation, yet many large New Zealand orthopterans remain undescribed. Among New Zealand’s anostostomatid wētā, Hemiandrus (ground wētā) is the most speciose genus but also the most poorly characterised and thus most in need of taxonomic and ecological work. Here we redescribe H. maculifrons and describe two...

Hypotheses of hybrid origin are common. Here we use next generation sequencing to test a hybrid hypothesis for a non-model insect with a large genome. We compared a putative hybrid triploid stick insect species (Acanthoxyla geisovii) with its putative paternal diploid taxon (Clitarchus hookeri), a relationship that provides clear predictions for th...

Short reads of cDNA from two New Zealand stick insects was assembled with a variety of different settings and software. Assembly statistics for assembly combinations, the number of contigs, and overall contig length for each species and de novo assembler grouped by kmer and data trim type. (DOCX)

The identity of transcript assemblies from Acanthoxyla geisovii was assessed by a BLAST homology search in which 13.3% matched sequences in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) non-redundant (nr) protein database. (PDF)

Open reading frame (ORF) prediction and GC content from stick insect mRNA. (DOCX)

The majority of transcript assemblies generated from cDNA from non-model organisms will find no match using BLAST searches against non-redundant (nr) protein databases, as in this example of two stick insects. Those transcript assemblies that have matches are predominantly from well resourced insect species. (DOCX)

Kernel density plot generated for the GC rich subset of data (48% or more). Sequence divergence of stick insect protein coding DNA (measured by SNP density per nucleotide) observed when reads were mapped to loci (transcript assemblies). Putative parental genome (Clitarchus hookeri) contains many loci with no or low allelic diversity. (DOCX)

The identity of transcript assemblies from Clitarchus hookeri was assessed by a BLAST homology search in which 13.3% matched sequences in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) non-redundant (nr) protein database. (PDF)

After running custom scripts to generate a unique subset of contigs for each stick insect species, the number of sequences was greatly reduced, as shown. It should be noted that this process reduced the number of sequences contained within longer sequences; there was no reduction for any sequences that overlapped any other sequence. (DOCX)

Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation often restricts gene flow and results in small populations that are at risk of inbreeding. However, some endangered species naturally occupy patchy habitat where local population extinction and recolonization are normal. We investigated population fragmentation in the range-restricted New Zealand small-scaled ski...

The largest extant New Zealand gecko, Hoplodactylus duvaucelii (Duvaucel's Gecko), is a nocturnal, viviparous species of conservation concern. Hoplodactylus duvaucelii, once widespread throughout New Zealand, is now confined to offshore islands, the majority of which are free from all introduced mammalian predators (mice, rats, cats, mustelids, bru...

Hybridization can create the selective force that promotes assortative mating but hybridization can also select for increased hybrid fitness. Gene flow resulting from hybridization can increase genetic diversity but also reduce distinctiveness. Thus the formation of hybrids has important implications for long-term species coexistence. This study co...