North Africa maintains an outstanding number of animal and plant species endemic for this area. The region represents an important refugium for thermophilic organisms, which became mostly extinct in Europe during the Pleistocene glacial periods. Furthermore, North Africa is characterized by extreme altitudinal variation with up to 4000 m in the Atlas Mts. These orographic structures are a fascinating challenge to analyse the effects of mountain barriers on gene flow; and consequently genetic differentiation and speciation processes. This area has only been marginally studied yet although it is of high biogeographic and phylogeographic interest and also important for the understanding of Europe itself. In order to reconstruct past species' distribution patterns, differentiation processes and speciation centres, we selected a variety of animal groups with different dispersal behaviour and capacity as well as ecological amplitudes.

The whole project is structured in three parts:

1. The radiation of the Buthus species flock in the area of the Atlas Mts. will be analysed using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences in order to detect potential refugia and speciation centres. These molecular markers will allow to date these species' radiations splitting this genus in about ten mostly allo- or parapatrically occurring species. Additionally, the analysis of the complete distribution range in North Africa (from Morocco to Egypt), but also including material from the Near East, will better clarify the biogeographic processes in this region. Venom analyses will complete this phylogeographic and evolutionary study.The genetic results will be compared with ecological niche models to evaluate the hypothesis of past isolation caused by mountain barriers during different glacial periodes and will help to suggest future scenarios of a warming environment.

This project will be performed in cooperation with Aris Parmakelis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece), Iasmi Stathi (Natural History Museum of Crete, Greece), Arie van der Meijden (STDB Porto, Portugal) and Frank Zachos (University Kiel, Germany).

2. A study about the speciation and biogeography of local endemic Pimelia species and other darkling beetles will complement this picture of the biogeographic patterns of the Atlas Mts. The molecular analyis of about 30 Pimelia species and other Tenebrionidae collected around these mountains will help to reveal the speciation processes in North Africa and potential colonisation patterns of the Canary Islands. The analyses will be performed using DNA sequencing. We include DNA fragments already used in a study of Juan et al. (1995, 1996). Further material from other parts of the Mediterranean region and the Arabian Peninsula complete our study to test Northwest Africa as potential hotspot of differentiation and speciation.

The project will be performed in cooperation with Thorsten Assmann (University Lüneburg, Germany), Brent Emerson (University East Anglia, UK), Herbert Friedrich (Oberkollenbach, Kürten, Germany), Jean-Claude Ringenbach (Brest, France) and Frank Zachos (University of Kiel, Germany).

3. Strongly isolated populations in oasis at the northern margin of the Saharan desert are used as models to test the genetic effects of long-term habitat isolation. The oases are located on the southern edge of the Atlas Mts. along the Draa and Ziz valleys. A butterfly, Parage aegeria, a toad, Bufo viridis and a Carabid species were selected to analyse the genetic differentiation in these isolated habitats and the effects of corridors, like river valleys. Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequencing were selected to analyse these effects.

Cooperation partners: Thorsten Assmann (University Lüneburg, Germany) and Frank Zachos (University Kiel, Germany)).