Sound signal of the Himalayan marmot in its insular range

А А Никольский ,Konstantin Belovezhets,Еlena A Vanisova

doi:10.1051/e3sconf/202126501006

А А Никольский , Konstantin Belovezhets + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202126501006

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Abstract

The range of Himalayan marmot (Marmota himalayana Hodgson, 1841) has an insular character, as it is limited by ecological and geographical barriers: in the north, northeast and east, these are deserts and the Loess Plateau, in the west - mountain peaks covered with glaciers and rivers, in the south - forests of the southern macro slope of the Himalayas. Only in the northwest of the range there is an ecological corridor. The geographical isolation of populations of marmots provokes the divergence of alarm call, which is one of the obvious genetically determined features. The results of cluster analysis based on a complex of features of the sound signal coincide with the results of analysis using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. The projection of variability on the structure and history of the landscape contributes to understand the ecological and geographical factors of divergence as the basis for the process of speciation.

Highlights

To describe the geographical variability of the alarm call of the Himalayan marmot, we use previous publications [7, 12]. We understand that this material is insufficient for a complete generalization, but it gives some idea about the scale of sound signal variability in the range of the Himalayan marmot
The unique sound signal structure of the Himalayan marmot corresponds to the insular position of its range
We focus on the processes associated with the formation of the north-northeastern ecological-geographical barrier in the range of the Himalayan marmot, taking in consideration its proximity to the northern neighbor, the Mongolian marmot, which will be discussed in more detail below

Summary

Introduction

The range of Himalayan marmot (Marmota himalayana Hodgson, 1841) is a giant “island” surrounded by ecological and geographical barriers limiting its distribution in Central and Western China, where it inhabits the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas, including such mountain ranges as Kunlun, Arka Tagh, Altyn Tagh, Nan Shan.The southern outskirts of the range of Himalayan marmot reach the border of Tibet with the Himalayas in Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan [1,2,3,4,5].The species forms two subspecies, M. himalayana himalayana Hodgson, 1841 and M. h. robusta Milne-Edwards, 1871 [2, 4], which was recently confirmed by Chinese specialists at the molecular-genetic level [5]. The southern outskirts of the range of Himalayan marmot reach the border of Tibet with the Himalayas in Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan [1,2,3,4,5]. Robusta - in the provinces of Qinghai, Tibet, in the west of Sichuan, as well as in the provinces of Yunnan, Gansu, and Xinjiang, but the border between the subspecies remains discussable [4]. The southern border of the range of the Himalayan marmot is at the same time the southern border of the range of the genus Marmota, inhabiting the open spaces of mountains and lowland steppes in North America and Eurasia. Due to the high uplift of the Himalayas and at the same time due to location at a relatively low latitude (about 27 ̊N), which raises the border of the snow line, between the upper border of the forest

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