Water voles from the genus Arvicola display an amazing ecological versatility, with aquatic and fossorial populations. The Southern water vole (Arvicola sapidus) is largely accepted as a valid species, as well as the newly described Arvicola persicus. In contrast, the taxonomic status and evolutionary relationships within Arvicola amphibiussensu lato had caused a long‐standing debate. The phylogenetic relationships among Arvicola were reconstructed using the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. Four lineages within A. amphibiuss.l. were identified with good support: Western European, Eurasiatic, Italian, and Turkish lineages. Fossorial and aquatic forms were found together in all well‐sampled lineages, evidencing that ecotypes do not correspond to distinct species. However, the Western European lineage mostly includes fossorial forms whereas the Eurasiatic lineage tends to include mostly aquatic forms. A morphometric analysis of skull shape evidenced a convergence of aquatic forms of the Eurasiatic lineage toward the typically aquatic shape of A. sapidus. The fossorial form of the Western European lineage, in contrast, displayed morphological adaptation to tooth‐digging behavior, with expanded zygomatic arches and proodont incisors. Fossorial Eurasiatic forms displayed intermediate morphologies. This suggests a plastic component of skull shape variation, combined with a genetic component selected by the dominant ecology in each lineage. Integrating genetic distances and other biological data suggest that the Italian lineage may correspond to an incipient species (Arvicola italicus). The three other lineages most probably correspond to phylogeographic variations of a single species (A. amphibius), encompassing the former A. amphibius, Arvicola terrestris, Arvicola scherman, and Arvicola monticola.
Past climatic fluctuations influenced forest habitats and impacted heavily the distribution of forest species, such as the edible dormouse, by changing the distribution and composition of forests themselves. Such effects may be valid for ongoing climate change as well. To improve our understanding of the edible dormouse's history and how it responded to changes in its environment, we investigated its variation across the understudied zone of Northern Turkey using two complementary markers of differentiation: the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene for genetics, and size and shape of the first upper molar for phenotypic differences. Genetic and morphometric results were strongly discrepant. Genetic analyses evidenced an amazing homogeneity throughout the Eurasian range of the edible dormouse, whereas morphometrics pointed to a complex, step‐wise differentiation along the Black Sea coast, the main signal being an opposition between Easternmost and Westernmost Turkish dormice. The genetic homogeneity suggests that this phenotypic differentiation is not the inheritance of glacial refuges, but the consequence of a more recent post‐glacial isolation. The transition between the European and Asian groups is located eastwards from the Marmara straits, undermining its claimed role as an efficient barrier but stressing the importance of climatic and vegetational factors. A secondary differentiation between populations from the Central Black Sea coast and Easternmost regions was evidenced, attributed to a complex interplay of climatic, topographic, anthropogenic, and ecological factors. Turkey, at the crossroad of European and Asian species, heavily impacted by the current global change including climatic and anthropogenic factors, appears of importance for understanding the historical dynamics of differentiation and exchanges between populations that shaped the current distribution of Eurasian species and their future survival. © 2012 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2012, 107, 611–623.
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media New York. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".Abstract Phylogeographic lineages are interpreted as the product of repeated isolation in glacial refugia, leading to vicariant differentiation. Being restricted to a given geographic area could also promote adaptive divergence in response to local conditions. The role of phylogeny and climate in the evolution of the bank vole (Myodes glareolus) was investigated here, focusing on molar tooth shape, a morphological feature related to the exploitation of food resources. A balanced role of phylogeny and climate was demonstrated. Response to environmental factors led to morphological convergence of bank voles from different lineages living in similar environments, and to within-lineage divergence in extreme environments. An important interaction of climate and phylogeny was found, suggesting that each lineage is living in a particular environment. This lineage-specific adaptation to a range of environmental conditions may have conditioned the potential of post-glacial recolonization of each lineage. Morphological covariation with environmental conditions further highlights the potential of adaptation of this species.
O ver the last few decades, many studies have done to clarify the taxonomy of water voles (genus Arvicola Lacépede, 1799). Recent studies showed that water voles divided into three species; A. sapidus (Miller, 1908) , A. amphibius (Linnaeus, 1758) (formerly known as A. terrestris) and A. scherman (Musser and Carleton, 2005). The first records of water vole (A. amphibious) from the Turkey reported by Steiner and Vauk (1966) around Lake Beyşehir. Depend on morphological and biometrical features, three water vole subspecies identified in Turkey; Arvicola amphibius persicus (Anatolia), Arvicola amphibius hintoni (Southeastern Anatolia Region), Arvicola amphibius cernjavskii (Thrace) (Mursaloğlu, 1975). amphibius comprises two ecological types which are aquatic and fossorial forms, each with different living habits and these ecotypes are often morphologically distinct (Meylan, 1977). And also recent studies lowerline that, water voles are characterized by an extraordinary morphological and ecological plasticity (Castiglia et al., 2016). Basically, geometric morphometrics allow to compare morphological objects by their shapes which can be described as the study of biological shapes. Traditional morphometrics has been quite a useful means in morp-Article History:
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