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In tropical rainforests, insects show especially high species richness and local endemism of species relative to vertebrates. One possible cause is that insects respond to historical fluctuations of rainforests on a smaller spatial scale than do vertebrates. To evaluate this hypothesis, we combine environmental niche models and mitochondrial DNA phylogeography for two pairs of sister species of the dung beetle genus Temnoplectron (T. aeneopiceum–T. subvolitans and T. politulum–T. reyi) from the rainforests of northeastern Australia, where climate‐driven rainforest fluctuations in the Quaternary have strongly influenced genetic and species diversity of vertebrates. Within both species pairs, the bioclimatic niche was conserved, but the T. aeneopiceum–T. subvolitans species pair had the narrower environmental range, and thus more restricted potential distribution. Coalescent analyses indicated Late Pliocene or …