Abstract
Peninsular India is an important region for mammalian diversification and harbors major biogeographic barriers. However, little is known about the role of this region in the diversification of bats though it harbors high chiropteran diversity. In this study, we used phenotypic, acoustic, and genetic markers to assess the diversification of Rhinolophus lepidus bats in South Asia. We first investigated if peninsular India is associated with speciation of R. lepidus. Further, we tested if the Palghat Gap acts as a biogeographic barrier to gene flow in this species. Our results revealed cryptic genetic diversity in peninsular India suggesting that this region holds at least one endemic species level lineage of the R. lepidus species complex. Analyses of populations of R. lepidus across the Palghat Gap in the Western Ghats revealed clinal variation in phenotype, with bats south of this barrier being bigger and emitting echolocation calls of higher frequency. We also observed that populations on either side of the Palghat Gap have remained genetically isolated since the mid-Holocene.
Highlights
South Asia encompasses several distinct biogeographic zones and biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al 2000, Tamma et al 2016)
Tukey’s test and boxplots of each variable revealed that the southernmost population (KMTR) of R. lepidus lepidus was distinct from the other populations based on body mass and peak frequency (Figure 3)
While the phenotypic parameters investigated did not exhibit any differences between peninsular Indian R. lepidus lepidus and other closely related lineages of horseshoe bats (Table 1), the former can be differentiated from its sympatric congener R. pusillus gracilis by its longer forearm (Bates and Harrison 1997)
Summary
South Asia encompasses several distinct biogeographic zones and biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al 2000, Tamma et al 2016). While much of the mammalian diversity is concentrated in the hotspots of northeastern India and the Western Ghats, mammalian endemism is largely concentrated in peninsular India, the Western Ghats (Tamma et al 2016) Bats follow these general mammalian trends, much of their endemism in peninsular India is currently considered to be at the subspecific level, and often as part of large, polytypic super-species composites that may contain high degrees of cryptic species-level diversity (Bates and Harrison 1997, Chattopadhyay et al 2012, Chattopadhyay et al 2016). In this context, Rhinolophus lepidus presents an interesting case. In the discussion of its taxonomy, we follow the treatment of Csorba et al (2003)
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