Contrasting Range and Demographic Histories in two Palearctic Dragonfly Species (Odonata: Anisoptera)

Predicted climatic suitability was larger for Somatochlora arctica than S. meridionalis, yet S. arctica had a smaller inferred effective population size for most of the last ~275,000 years.

• Why it matters: Suitable climate is often used to infer past range, but it is unclear whether it also predicts effective population size, especially in species with different habitat requirements.
• What they did: The study combined PSMC demographic reconstructions from individual reference genomes with MaxEnt paleoclimate projections across six intervals spanning ~3.3 million years, plus ancestral state reconstructions of peatland specialization.
• The result: Suitability for S. arctica peaked during the Last Glacial Maximum, while peatland specialization most likely increased in Clade I with a median age of 9.4 million years, indicating decoupling between suitability and demographic history.

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