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Q13 - Island Colonization History of Canary Islands Beetles

Theoretical B Real exam question - full text reproduced under IBO's CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license
Phylogenetic Trees & Cladistics

The flightless beetle genus Tarphius lives in humid forests and has 29 endemic species on the Canary Islands. The species are found on the five western islands of the archipelago, but not on the two eastern islands, closest to Africa. The more northern archipelago Madeira has additional species. A species may evolve on one island and then disperse to another island (ex situ-speciation) or it may evolve within an island from another Tarphius species already present there (in situ-speciation).

Part of the cladogram of Tarphius from the Canary Islands with the Madeira clade as an outgroup (black branch). Only species from three (La Palma, Gomera and El Hierro) of the five western islands are included (from Emerson & Oromí 2005).

Figure 1. Figure 1.

Using the information and data, determine which of the statements are true or which are false.

A. The Canarian phylogeny suggests both ex situ-and in situ-speciation events
B. From Madeira, Tarphius colonized the island of El Hierro
C. All three islands were colonized twice
D. Gomera is likely to be the Canarian Island with the highest habitat diversity of humid forest
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Question reproduced from IBO 2015, Theoretical Exam B, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 - attributed to the International Biology Olympiad. Open the full exam PDF · Community solutions (unofficial)