Contrasting Trends of Population Size Change for Two Eurasian Owlet Species—Athene brama and Glaucidium radiatum From South Asia Over the Late Quaternary

Abstract

Climatic oscillations over the Quaternary have had a lasting impact on species’ distribution, evolutionary history, and genetic composition. Many species show dramatic population size changes coinciding with the last glacial period. However, the extent and direction of change vary across biogeographic regions, species-habitat associations, and species traits. Here we use genomic data to assess population size changes over the late Quaternary using the Pairwise Sequential Markovian Coalescent (PSMC) approach in two Eurasian Owlet species—the Spotted Owlet, Athene brama, and the Jungle Owlet, Glaucidium radiatum. While Spotted Owlets are typically associated with open habitats, Jungle Owlets are found in deciduous forests and scrublands. We find that the effective population size for the Spotted Owlet increased after the Interglacial period till the Last Glacial Maxima and subsequently declined toward the Mid-Holocene. On the other hand, effective population size estimates for the Jungle Owlet increased gradually throughout this period. These observations are in line with climatic niche model-based predictions for range size change for both species from a previous study and suggest that habitat associations at the local scale are important in determining responses to past climatic and vegetational changes. The Spotted Owlet result also aligns well with the expectation of open habitat expansion during the arid Glacial Maxima, whereas for the Jungle Owlet the contrasting expectation does not hold. Therefore, assessing the impacts of glacial history on population trajectories of multiple species with different habitat associations is necessary to understand the impacts of past climate on South Asian taxa.

Re‐assessing the phylogenetic status and evolutionary relationship of Forest Owlet (Athene blewitti (Hume 1873)) using genomic data

“…Assembled contigs of previously sequenced UCE data for the family Strigidae and outgroups were obtained from Dryad (Salter et al 2020). Spotted Owlet Athene brama and Jungle Owlet Glaucidium radiatum whole-genome sequences generated for another study (Natesh et al 2020) were also assembled de novo and used to harvest the UCEs, as described above. Next, we followed the Phyluce Tutorial I (Faircloth 2016) to align MAFFT 7.13 (Katoh & Standley 2013), trim GBLOCKS 0.91b (Castresana 2000) and concatenate the data for downstream processing.…”

Re-assessing the phylogenetic status and evolutionary relationship of Forest Owlet [Athene blewitti(Hume 1873)] using genomic data

“…Assembled contigs of previously sequenced UCE data for the Strigidae family and outgroups were obtained from Dryad (Salter et al, 2020). Spotted Owlet and Jungle Owlet whole-genome sequences generated for another study (Natesh et al, 2020) were also denovo assembled and used to harvest the UCEs, as described above. Next, we followed the Phyluce Tutorial I (Faircloth, 2016) to align, trim and concatenate the data for the downstream process.…”

Historical biogeography and phylogeography ofIndoplanorbis exustus

“…For example, land connections were established between various Sundaic Islands and mainland Southeast Asia, as well as between Sri Lanka and India several times during the Pleistocene which resulted from the aforementioned lowering of the sea level (Bossuyt, 2014;Brown et al, 2013). In the Indian subcontinent many taxa which favours humid climate underwent range contraction and local extinction during the glacial phases (Iyengar et al, 2005;Natesh et al, 2020;Vidya, 2016). Other lines of evidence from palynology and sedimentation studies as well as paleoclimate modelling also suggest xerification in many parts of the subcontinent especially Northwestern India (Goodbred, 2003;Roberts et al, 2018).…”