Journal
MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS AND EVOLUTION
Volume 61, Issue 3, Pages 888-898Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2011.08.010
Keywords
Cryptic species; Species-tree; Introns; Integrative taxonomy; Chiroptera; Myotis
Funding
- Spanish Ministry of Science and Education [SAF2006-12784-C02-02, SAF2009-09172]
- CSIC [200430E330]
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Delimiting species is a crucial issue for many biological disciplines and is of primary importance for designing effective conservation plans. Traditional taxonomy based on morphological characters can be misled by the presence of phenotypic plesiomorphism or adaptative convergence. The use of multiple locus genetic data appears thus as a powerful tool for recognizing species boundaries. In this study, we used six nuclear introns and two mitochondrial markers to conduct a phylogenetic study of the Myotis nattereri species complex in the Western Palearctic. We combined tree-based and non-tree-based analyses, and also used concatenated phylogenetic methods of the separated nuclear and mitochondrial dataset as well as a recent coalescence-based multilocus approach. The strong concordance between the results of the analyses conducted confirms that M. nattereri is a paraphyletic group that is composed of four well-differentiated lineages in the study area. In the framework of the unified species concept, these four clades can be confidently considered as four valid species. This recognition of new cryptic species in the Western Mediterranean region shows that the biodiversity of this well-studied area is still not fully understood. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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