Abstract
BackgroundThe Cape horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus capensis, is endemic to the Cape region of South Africa. Coalescent analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence data suggests extensive historical gene flow between populations despite strong geographic variation of their echolocation call phenotype. Nevertheless the fine-scale genetic structure and evolutionary ecology of R. capensis remains poorly understood. Here we describe the development of 10 novel polymorphic microsatellite loci to investigate of the dispersal ecology of R. capensis and to facilitate taxonomic studies of Rhinolophus species in southern Africa.FindingsWe report 10 microsatellite primer pairs that consistently amplify scorable and polymorphic loci across 12 African rhinolophid species. Initial analysis of two populations of R. capensis from South Africa revealed moderate to high levels of allelic variation with 4–14 alleles per locus and observed heterozygosities of 0.450–0.900. No evidence of linkage disequilibrium was observed and eight of the loci showed no departure from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. Cross-species utility of these markers revealed consistently amplifiable polymorphic loci in eleven additional rhinolophid species.ConclusionsThe cross-amplification success of the microsatellites developed here provides a cost-effective set of population genetic marker for the study of rhinolophid evolutionary ecology and conservation in southern Africa.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13104-015-1465-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The Cape horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus capensis, is endemic to the Cape region of South Africa
Despite evidence for extensive historical gene flow the species is characterised by geographically structured variation in echolocation frequency which appears to be closely coupled to local environmental conditions [2]
Twenty-six species of horseshoe bats have been described in sub-Saharan Africa with 11 occurring in the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe [1]
Summary
The Cape horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus capensis, is endemic to the Cape region of South Africa. Conclusions: The cross-amplification success of the microsatellites developed here provides a cost-effective set of population genetic marker for the study of rhinolophid evolutionary ecology and conservation in southern Africa. We develop and test a suite of microsatellite markers (1) to test hypotheses of adaptive evolution in R. capensis and (2) to better understand population genetic structuring and the recent evolutionary history of African rhinolophids.
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