What an ancient ecosystem can tell us: scrub islands of the southeastern U.S. and their endemic grasshoppers within the Melanoplus Puer Group (Orthoptera: Acrididae: Melanoplinae)

The oldest ecosystem in Florida, if not the southeastern U.S., is scrub, often characterized by a scattering of short trees and a low array of xeric vegetation interspersed with swaths of dry white sand. Scrub ecosystems are also often associated with ridges, typically in Florida, which are thought to have been used as refugia during the sea level rises of the Pleistocene era. Following the fall of the water level these habitats effectively remained islands due in part to their unique soil composition and a relative lack of plant diversity. As a result of its geological and biogeographic history, scrub is home to a myriad of endemic species of both the plant and animal variety. Specifically, scrub contains a large number of arthropod endemics, some of which belong to the Puer Group of the grasshopper genus, Melanoplus Stål (Orthoptera: Acrididae: Melanoplinae). Comprised of 16 species largely defined by morphological characters, these species are brachypterous and habitat-specific in such a way that different scrub islands harbor different species. To test how these brachypterous grasshoppers have speciated in the scrub islands, we propose a preliminary phylogenetic hypothesis of the Puer Group based on six genes (mitochondrial COI and 5 anonymous nuclear loci). This work represents the first step for illuminating the biogeographic history of the southeastern U.S. using grasshoppers as a proxy.