Assessing the phylogeographic history of the montane caddisfly Thremma gallicum using mitochondrial and restriction-site-associated DNA (RAD) markers

Repeated Quaternary glaciations have significantly shaped the present distribution and diversity of several European species in aquatic and terrestrial habitats. To study the phylogeography of freshwater invertebrates, patterns of intraspecific variation have been examined primarily using mitochondrial DNA markers that may yield results unrepresentative of the true species history. Here, population genetic parameters were inferred for a montane aquatic caddisfly, Thremma gallicum, by sequencing a 658-bp fragment of the mitochondrial CO1 gene, and 12,514 nuclear RAD loci. T. gallicum has a highly disjunct distribution in southern and central Europe, with known populations in the Cantabrian Mountains, Pyrenees, Massif Central, and Black Forest. Both datasets represented rangewide sampling of T. gallicum. For the CO1 dataset, this included 352 specimens from 26 populations, and for the RAD dataset, 17 specimens from eight populations. We tested 20 competing phylogeographic scenarios using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) and estimated genetic diversity patterns. Support for phylogeographic scenarios and diversity estimates differed between datasets with the RAD data favouring a southern origin of extant populations and indicating the Cantabrian Mountains and Massif Central populations to represent highly diverse populations as compared with the Pyrenees and Black Forest populations. The CO1 data supported a vicariance scenario (north–south) and yielded inconsistent diversity estimates. Permutation tests suggest that a few hundred polymorphic RAD SNPs are necessary for reliable parameter estimates. Our results highlight the potential of RAD and ABC-based hypothesis testing to complement phylogeographic studies on non-model species.