PleistoDist

PleistoDist models Pleistocene sea-level change to quantify temporal island connectivity and generate spatiotemporally explicit expectations for inter-island dispersal and population genetic structure.

Key Features:

• Visualization and Quantification: Visualizes and quantifies temporal changes in island area and connectivity, including reconstruction of land bridges during Quaternary glacial maxima (>120 meters below present sea level).
• Hypothesis Testing: Tests temporally explicit hypotheses of inter-island dispersal and community assembly to assess historical connectivity effects on gene flow and species distributions.
• Population Genetic Simulations: Generates spatiotemporally explicit neutral expectations of population genetic structure across archipelagos using population genetic simulations.

Scientific Applications:

• Evolutionary Biology and Biogeography: Re-analyzes published datasets to infer historical dispersal routes, gene flow, and assembly processes while accounting for Pleistocene sea-level changes.
• Population Genetic Inference: Provides neutral null models for interpreting extant genetic structure of island populations.

Methodology:

Simulates historical sea-level scenarios to reconstruct land-bridge–mediated connectivity (including intervals >120 meters below present) and conducts population genetic simulations to produce spatiotemporally explicit neutral expectations; implemented as an R package.