What should we call the Levant mole? Unravelling the systematics and demography of Talpa levantis Thomas, 1906 sensu lato (Mammalia: Talpidae)

Abstract

Turkey hosts 5 of the 11 species of Talpa described to date and Anatolia, in particular, appears to be an important centre of diversity for this genus. Of these taxa, the Levant mole, Talpa levantis Thomas, 1906 has been found to consist of two genetically divergent sublineages, which may represent separate species. Here, we use a combination of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences from specimens of T. levantis s.lat., collected across the species’ geographical range, to explore the systematics and demographic history of Levant moles. Both mitochondrial and nuclear markers confirm the existence of distinct eastern and western sublineages, which apparently diverged from each other in the early Pleistocene. Given the degree of cytochrome-b divergence between these (7.28%), we consider them to represent independent cryptic species. By including topotypic specimens of T. levantis s. str. in our study, we are able to show that this name applies to the western sublineage, distributed across most of the Anatolian Black Sea coastal region, from the vicinity of Trabzon in the east, westwards to Marmara. The earliest name available for the eastern taxon, found in Transcaucasia and adjacent parts of north-eastern Anatolia, is T. transcaucasica Dahl, 1944. Cytochrome-b haplotype diversity in T. levantis is relatively high and demographic analyses suggest that the species may have survived in multiple, separate, refugial areas during the Pleistocene. Our work brings the total number of named mole species recognized in Turkey to six, emphasising the importance of this region as a global centre of mole diversification.