No abstract

Aim: Comprehensive, global information on species’ occurrences is an essential biodiversity variable and central to a range of applications in ecology, evolution, biogeography and conservation. Expert range maps often represent a species’ only available distributional information and play an increasing role in conservation assessments and macroecology. We provide global range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal species harmonised to the taxonomy of the Mammal Diversity Database (MDD) mobilised from two sources, the Handbook of the Mammals of the World (HMW) and the Illustrated Checklist of the Mammals of the World (CMW). Location: Global. Taxon: All extant mammal species. Methods: Range maps were digitally interpreted, georeferenced, error-checked and subsequently taxonomically aligned between the HMW (6253 species), the CMW (6431 species) and the MDD taxonomies (6362 species). Results: Range maps can be evaluated and visualised in an online map browser at Map of Life ( mol.org ) and accessed for individual or batch download for non-commercial use. Main conclusion: Expert maps of species’ global distributions are limited in their spatial detail and temporal specificity, but form a useful basis for broad-scale characterizations and model-based integration with other data. We provide georeferenced range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal species as shapefiles, with species-level metadata and source information packaged together in geodatabase format. Across the three taxonomic sources our maps entail, there are 1784 taxonomic name differences compared to the maps currently available on the IUCN Red List website. The expert maps provided here are harmonised to the MDD taxonomic authority and linked to a community of online tools that will enable transparent future updates and version control.

The Southern birch mouse (Sicista subtilis) is a small-sized rodent species characteristic of the Palearctic steppes with westernmost occurrences in central Europe. The species was considered to be extinct in Transylvania (central Romania), but in our field survey we captured three living individuals near the city of Cluj-Napoca. On the basis of nuclear interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 sequences, we assessed the taxonomic status of the newly found S. subtilis population by comparing them to available sequences, including the sequences of its subspecies. The Transylvanian samples were found to be genetically closest to the Hungarian samples of S. subtilis trizona. These new records extend the known geographic range of this rediscovered species and provide additional information on its habitat preference and external morphological features. Moreover, our phylogenetic tree reconstruction for seven Sicista taxa provides a basic insight into the phylogenetic relationships of the genus, placing the northern Eurasian taxa (S. betulina and S. subtilis) at the crown of the tree and the central Asian taxa at the base of the tree. The Transylvanian occurrence of S. subtilis trizona, which is endemic to the Carpathian Basin, is of high faunistic value as a result of an increase in the number of known populations of this subspecies -one of the most endangered rodents of Europe -from one to two.

No abstract

Introgressive hybridization can pose a serious threat to endangered species which have an overlapping distribution such as in the case of two polecat species, Mustela eversmanii and M. putorius, in Europe. The population size of steppe polecat is known to continuously shrink, whereas its sister species, the European polecat, is still somehow widespread. In this study, we perform an analysis using microsatellite (SSR) and genomic (SNP) data sets to identify natural hybrids between polecats. Four populations were genotyped for eight polymorphic SSR loci, and thousands of unlinked SNPs were generated using a reduced‐representation sequencing approach, RADseq, to characterize the genetic make‐up of allopatric populations and to identify hybrids in the sympatric area. We applied standard population genetic analyses to characterize the populations based on their SSR allelic frequency. Only a single sample out of 48 sympatric samples showed exact intermediacy that we identified as an F1 hybrid. Additionally, one specimen was indicated in the genomic data sets as backcrossed. Other backcrosses, indicated by SSRs, were not validated by SNPs, which highlights the higher efficacy of the genomic method to identify backcrossed individuals. The low frequency of hybridization suggests that the difference in habitat preference of the two species may act as a barrier to admixture. Therefore, it is apparently unlikely that polecat populations are threatened by significant introgression. The two species showed a clear genetic differentiation using both techniques. We found higher genetic diversity values in the sympatric steppe polecat population than in the other studies on polecat populations. Although M. putorius is a hunted species in most countries, genetic diversity values indicate worse conditions in Europe than in the protected sibling species M. eversmanii. Suspending hunting and providing protected status of the former seems to be reasonable and timely.