• Main Author: T R Hitchings
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; Indian; New Zealand; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1073.409; http://www.ephemeroptera-galactica.com/pubs/pub_h/pubhitchingst2008p89.pdf

Abstract Situated astride the boundary of the Pacific and Austro-Indian tectonic plates, New Zealand has had a turbulent geological history. Land uplift, earthquakes and volcanism continue to the present day. Separation from Antarctica and the eastern coast of Australia in the late Cretaceous resulted in the isolation of the mayfly population. The survivors evolved into the present fauna, which includes 42 described species in 19 genera and 8 families. All species are endemic. Species distribution maps, based on more than 8,000 records included herein, illustrate a limited number of distributional patterns resulting from vegetational modification and past climatic and geological events. The results support the view that a centre of dispersal of double gilled leptophlebiid species was in northern New Zealand, but that glaciation in the south resulted in a different pattern of radiation for some single gilled Leptophlebiidae, the Nesameletidae and the Rallidentidae.