The perceived wide geographic range of organisms in the sea, facilitated by ready dispersal of waterborne dispersal stages, is a challenge for hypotheses of marine speciation but a boon to efforts of marine conservation. Wide species ranges are especially striking in the reef-rich Indo-west Pacific, the largest and most diverse marine biogeographic region, extending across half the planet. The insular marine biota of the tropical Pacific is characterized by wide-ranging species and provides the most striking examples of long distance dispersal, with endemism largely confined to the most remote island groups. Here we show that the gastropod Astralium ''rhodostomum'' has developed endemic clades on almost every Pacific archipelago sampled, a pattern unprecedented in marine biogeography, and reminiscent of the terrestrial biota of oceanic islands. Mitochondrial DNA sequences indicate that this species-complex is comprised of at least 30 geographically isolated clades, separated by as little as 180 km. Evidence suggests that such fine scale endemism and high diversity is not exceptional, but likely characterizes a substantial fraction of the reef biota. These results imply that (1) marine speciation can regularly occur over much finer spatial scales than generally accepted, (2) the diversity of coral reefs is even higher than suggested by morphology-based estimates, and (3) conservation efforts need to focus at the archipelagic level in the sea as on land.

Patterns of distribution and processes of differentiation have often been contrasted between terrestrial and marine biotas. The islands of Oceania offer an excellent setting to explore this contrast, because the geographic setting for terrestrial and shallow-water, benthic, marine organisms are the same: the myriad islands strewn across the vast Pacific. The size of species ranges and the geographic distribution of endemism are two biogeographic attributes that are thought to differ markedly between terrestrial and marine biotas in the Pacific. While terrestrial species are frequently confined to single islands or archipelagoes throughout Oceania, marine species tend to have wide to very wide distributions, and are rarely restricted to single island groups except for the most isolated archipelagoes. We explore the conditions under which species can reach an island by dispersal and differentiate. Genetic differentiation can occur either through founder speciation or vicariance; these processes are requisite ends of a continuum. We show that founder speciation is most likely when few propagules enter the dispersal medium and survive well while they travel far. We argue that conditions favorable to founder speciation are common in marine as well as terrestrial systems, and that terrestrial-type, archipelagic-level endemism is likely common in marine taxa. We give examples of marine groups that show archipelagic level endemism on most Pacific island groups as well as of terrestrial species that are widespread. Thus both the patterns and processes of insular diversification are variable, and overlap more between land and sea than previously considered.

The pantropical sea urchin genus Eucidaris contains four currently recognized species, all of them allopatric: E. metularia in the Indo‐West Pacific, E. thouarsi in the eastern Pacific, E. tribuloides in both the western and eastern Atlantic, and E. clavata at the central Atlantic islands of Ascension and St. Helena. We sequenced a 640‐bp region of the cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene of mitochondrial DNA to determine whether this division of the genus into species was confirmed by molecular markers, to ascertain their phylogenetic relations, and to reconstruct the history of possible dispersal and vicariance events that led to present‐day patterns of species distribution. We found that E. metularia split first from the rest of the extant species of the genus. If COI divergence is calibrated by the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama, the estimated date of the separation of the Indo‐West Pacific species is 4.7–6.4 million years ago. This date suggests that the last available route of genetic contact between the Indo‐Pacific and the rest of the tropics was from west to east through the Eastern Pacific Barrier, rather than through the Tethyan Sea or around the southern tip of Africa. The second cladogenic event was the separation of eastern Pacific and Atlantic populations by the Isthmus of Panama. Eucidaris at the outer eastern Pacific islands (Galapagos, Isla del Coco, Clipperton Atoll) belong to a separate clade, so distinct from mainland E. thouarsi as to suggest that this is a different species, for which the name E. galapagensis is revived from the older taxonomic literature. Complete lack of shared alleles in three allozyme loci between island and mainland populations support their separate specific status. Eucidaris galapagensis and E. thouarsi are estimated from their COI divergence to have split at about the same time that E. thouarsi and E. tribuloides were being separated by the Isthmus of Panama. Even though currents could easily convey larvae between the eastern Pacific islands and the American mainland, the two species do not appear to have invaded each other's ranges. Conversely, the central Atlantic E. clavata at St. Helena and Ascension is genetically similar to E. tribuloides from the American and African coasts. Populations on these islands are either genetically connected to the coasts of the Atlantic or have been colonized by extant mitochondrial DNA lineages of Eucidaris within the last 200,000 years. Although it is hard to explain how larvae can cross the entire width of the Atlantic within their competent lifetimes, COI sequences of Eucidaris from the west coast of Africa are very similar to those of E. tribuloides from the Caribbean. F_ST statistics indicate that gene flow between E. metularia from the Indian Ocean and from the western and central Pacific is restricted. Low gene flow is also evident between populations of E. clavata from Ascension and St. Helena. Rates of intraspecific exchange of genes in E. thouarsi, E. galapagensis, and E. tribuloides, on the other hand, are high. The phylogeny of Eucidaris confirms Ernst Mayr's conclusions that major barriers to the dispersal of tropical echinoids have been the wide stretch of deep water between central and eastern Pacific, the cold water off the southwest coast of Africa, and the Isthmus of Panama. It also suggests that a colonization event in the eastern Pacific has led to speciation between mainland and island populations.

For marine, benthic animals, duration of planktonic larval stages is expected to correlate with dispersal ability, and thus species ranges, at least where planktonic dispersal is necessary to reach habitats. Yet past analyses of larval duration and species ranges across the insular Pacific show at most a weak correlation. So, do larvae matter in determining species ranges in such an island setting? We analyze an extensive dataset on cowries and find, again, that estimated larval duration does not correlate with species ranges. Several factors can obscure a real correlation, however, including estimation error, intraspecific variation, other factors affecting dispersal, poor taxonomy, and remote endemics. We show that taking these into consideration greatly improves correlation. Further evidence for the importance of larval duration comes from diversity and speciation patterns. Diversity of poor dispersers drops more rapidly eastward across the Pacific and leads to taxonomic differences in community composition across the basin. Geographic scale of differentiation is strongly influenced by larval duration and leads to the most rapid diversification at intermediate dispersal capacities. A major lesson from the phylogenetically corrected cowrie dataset is that without accurate and appropriate taxonomy, clear and important distributional and diversity patterns can become obscured. Inappropriate taxonomic scale can also obscure macroecological patterns: cowrie tribes/subfamilies show substantial variation in the steepness of their diversity cline across the Pacific and in their proportional local abundance, showing the importance of ecological traits in controlling distributions. In contrast such variation was not evident in a study focused at the family level in corals and fishes.