How the African house gecko (<i>Hemidactylus mabouia</i>) conquered the world

Alien species are among the greatest threats to biodiversity, but the evolutionary origins of invasiveness remain obscure. We conducted the first range-wide sampling of <i>Hemidactylus mabouia</i> from more than 120 localities across Africa, Madagascar and the Neotropics to understand the evolutionary history of one of the most widely distributed, invasive vertebrates in the world. We used a multi-locus phylogeny, species delimitation, fossil-calibrated timetree, ancestral area reconstruction and species distribution models (SDMs) to determine how many putative species-level lineages are contained within <i>H. mabouia</i>, the timing and tempo of diversification, and the origins of commensality-providing insights into the evolutionary origins of invasiveness. Our analyses suggest '<i>H. mabouia</i>' originated in the Miocene in the Zambezian biogeographic region and includes as many as 20 putative species-level lineages, of which only <i>Hemidactylus mabouia sensu stricto</i> is invasive and widely distributed, including all Neotropical records. Zambezia is the hotspot for diversity within the group with 14 species in southeastern Zambezia. SDMs suggest that <i>H. mabouia</i> was able to establish in the Neotropics due to habitat suitability, and globalization and the slave trade probably allowed it to cross the Atlantic. Distribution models for the <i>H. mabouia</i> complex overpredict the range of the invasive <i>H. mabouia sensu stricto</i>-highlighting the importance of taxonomy in invasive species management.