Evolutionary history and species delimitations: a case study of the hazel dormouse, Muscardinus avellanarius

Abstract

Robust identification of species and significant evolutionary units (ESUs) is essential to implement appropriate conservation strategies for endangered species. However, definitions of species or ESUs are numerous and sometimes controversial, which might lead to biased conclusions, with serious consequences for the management of endangered species. The hazel dormouse, an arboreal rodent of conservation concern throughout Europe is an ideal model species to investigate the relevance of species identification for conservation purposes. This species is a member of the Gliridae family, which is protected in Europe and seriously threatened in the northern part of its range. We assessed the extent of genetic subdivision in the hazel dormouse by sequencing one mitochondrial gene (cytb) and two nuclear genes (BFIBR, APOB) and genotyping 10 autosomal microsatellites. These data were analysed using a combination of phylogenetic analyses and species delimitation methods. Multilocus analyses revealed the presence of two genetically distinct lineages (approximately 11 % cytb genetic divergence, no nuclear alleles shared) for the hazel dormouse in Europe, which presumably diverged during the Late Miocene. The phylogenetic patterns suggests that Muscardinus avellanarius populations could be split into two cryptic species respectively distributed in western and central-eastern Europe and Accession numbers are available at the ''European Nucleotide Archive'' browser at the address http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/ LT614830-LT614893 and in Supplementary Anatolia. However, the comparison of several species definitions and methods estimated the number of species between 1 and 10. Our results revealed the difficulty in choosing and applying an appropriate criterion and markers to identify species and highlight the fact that consensus guidelines are essential for species delimitation in the future. In addition, this study contributes to a better knowledge about the evolutionary history of the species.

Mammal endemism In Italy: A review

“…Mouton et al (2017) identified two highly divergent lineages of Muscardinus avellanarius respectively distributed in western and central-eastern Europe and Anatolia. Moreover adopting several species definitions and methods the number of species can be between one and 10 ( Mouton et al 2017). One of this putative species is an Italian endemic diverging 3.5 MYA from western European populations.…”

Mammals and meaningful taxonomic units: the debate about species concepts and conservation

“…, Groves , for a very good and balanced empirical analysis, see Mouton et al. ). ‘Splitters’ have been accused of taxonomic inflation, ‘lumpers’ of taxonomic inertia.…”

Ancient DNA from an extinct Mediterranean micromammal—Hypnomys morpheus(Rodentia: Gliridae)—Provides insight into the biogeographic history of insular dormice

“…and Martín-Suárez (2013) suggested that the base age of Gliridae (50 Mya) used as a calibration age by Montgelard et al (2003) was too old and should be replaced by 16 Mya, a view that has subsequently not been followed (e.g., Mouton et al, 2017). The first possible origin for Hypnomys, which is the most commonly accepted hypothesis (e.g., Agustí, 1980;Alcover et al, 1981;Bover et al, 2014;Colom, 1978;Mas et al, 2018;Moyà-Solà & Pons-Moyà, 1980), involves a split from a continental ancestor during the Late Tortonian/Early Messinian (Figure 2) and its arrival into the Balearic Islands during the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC, 5.97-5.33 Mya;Krijgsman, Hilgen, Raffi, Sierro, & Wilson, 1999;Manzi et al, 2013).…”

“…We implemented a birth‐death tree prior and a single relaxed uncorrelated lognormal clock model (with rate multipliers for each of the three partitions, see Table ) to estimate phylogeny and divergence times using BEAST v.1.8.4 (Drummond, Suchard, Xie, & Rambaut, ). To calibrate our analysis, we followed previous studies (e.g., Montgelard et al, ; Nunome et al, ; Mouton et al, ) and constrained the age of the divergence between Sciuridae and Gliridae according to a uniform distribution with a minimum of 50 million years ago (Mya) and a maximum of 55 Mya, corresponding to the earliest known fossil representatives of these families (Hartenberger, ). We repeated our analysis four times with different starting trees created using Mesquite v.3.04 (Maddison & Maddison, ) based on an ML tree created using IQTREE v.1.6.6 (Nguyen, Schmidt, von Haeseler, & Minh, ).…”

“…We implemented a birth-death tree prior and a single relaxed uncorrelated lognormal clock model (with rate multipliers for each of the three partitions, see Table 3) to estimate phylogeny and divergence times using BEAST v.1.8.4 (Drummond, Suchard, Xie, & Rambaut, 2012). To calibrate our analysis, we followed previous studies (e.g., Montgelard et al, 2003;Nunome et al, 2007;Mouton et al, 2017) and constrained the age of the divergence between Sciuridae and Gliridae according to a uniform distribution with a minimum of 50 million years ago (Mya) and a maximum of 55…”