Fig. 1

a Phylogenetic predictions for Gondwanan vicariance and long-distance hypotheses for Old World tropical diversity: i) Gondwanan ancient vicariance; the first vicariance event when East Gondwana (India-Madagascar-Australia) separated from Africa-South America (E-W); another vicariance event separating Australia from India-Madagascar (I-A); ii) long-distance dispersal across continents, leading to distinct lineages; and iii) multiple dispersal/vicariance scenario in which each landmass was colonised multiple times with younger divergence dates; b) Geographic distribution of the genus Ethmostigmus in the Old World tropics (red dots indicate where Ethmostigmus species have been sampled for biogeographic analyses) and approximate species distribution ranges in the peninsular Indian Plate 1. E. sahyadrensis, 2. E. praveeni, 3. E. coonooranus, 4. E. agasthyamalaiensis, and 5. E. tristis (based on Joshi and Edgecombe, 2018)