Phylogenetic and demographic insights into Kuhl's pipistrelle, Pipistrellus kuhlii, in the Middle East.

ABSTRACT: Kuhl's pipistrelle is found from Europe and North Africa all of the way to Asia, yet studies have thus far concentrated on the western limit of its distribution. Here we form a multi-marker picture of the diversity of Kuhl's pipistrelle at a mid point in the Arabian peninsula in an attempt to redress the western sampling bias and to represent a region from which no genetic data has thus far been presented for this species. The three Arabian Cytochrome b haplotypes showed a clear divergence of 19 substitutions from those found in either Europe or North Africa. Molecular dating suggests the Arabian population split from the remaining Kuhl's somewhere between 0.7 and 1.7 million years before present around the time of a series of aridification events across northern Africa. Well supported lin

SUBMITTER: Bray TC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3582509 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature