Abstract
The fulvous fruit bat (Rousettus leschenaulti) and the greater short-nosed fruit bat (Cynopterus sphinx) are two abundant and widely co-distributed Old World fruit bats in Southeast and East Asia. The former species forms large colonies in caves while the latter roots in small groups in trees. To test whether these differences in social organization and roosting ecology are associated with contrasting patterns of gene flow, we used mtDNA and nuclear loci to characterize population genetic subdivision and phylogeographic histories in both species sampled from China, Vietnam and India. Our analyses from R. leschenaulti using both types of marker revealed little evidence of genetic structure across the study region. On the other hand, C. sphinx showed significant genetic mtDNA differentiation between the samples from India compared with China and Vietnam, as well as greater structuring of microsatellite genotypes within China. Demographic analyses indicated signatures of past rapid population expansion in both taxa, with more recent demographic growth in C. sphinx. Therefore, the relative genetic homogeneity in R. leschenaulti is unlikely to reflect past events. Instead we suggest that the absence of substructure in R. leschenaulti is a consequence of higher levels of gene flow among colonies, and that greater vagility in this species is an adaptation associated with cave roosting.
Highlights
Comparative studies taxa offer a powerful approach to elucidate how population processes and historical events have acted in shaping organisms’ current distribution and genetic structure
Genetic diversity Samples of both Rousettus leschenaulti and Cynopterus sphinx showed no evidence of linkage disequilibrium between loci, and there was no significant deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium detected in either species following Bonferroni correction for multiple tests
Our MSN network showed that haplotypes were not geographically structured while tests of analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated that 96% of the genetic variance was due to within-population variation
Summary
Comparative studies taxa offer a powerful approach to elucidate how population processes and historical events have acted in shaping organisms’ current distribution and genetic structure. Disparities in genetic structure between co-distributed species can highlight differential responses to these processes often resulting from contrasting life history and ecological traits. Contrasting dispersal strategies, which are often linked with social structure, impact on the balance between gene flow, genetic drift, mutation and natural selection [7]. Tree cavity/foliage roosting species of bats tend to live in much smaller numbers in a ubiquitous resource. This might have led to less evolutionary pressures for high dispersal. These expectations are supported by empirical data that show cavity/foliage roosting species are more susceptible to fragmentation than cave-roosting species [10]
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