A new rodent species of the genus Mus (Rodentia: Muridae) confirms the biogeographical uniqueness of the isolated forests of southern Ethiopia

Krásová, Jarmila; Mikula, Ondřej; Lavrenchenko, Leonid A.; Šumbera, Radim; Meheretu, Yonas; Bryja, Josef

doi:10.1007/s13127-022-00539-x

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Although not considered in this study, which focuses on the Escarpment, the distribution ranges of R. acrotis Lineages 1, 2, and 4–6 (Figure 3) demonstrate additional barriers that can be identified between the E Arc and western (Albertine) and eastern (Kenyan) Rift mountains (see also Nicolas et al., 2020; Taylor et al., 2009) and between the Kenyan Rift and the Ethiopian mountains (see also Dianat et al., 2024 for shrews, and Onditi et al., 2021, Krásová et al., 2022 and Šumbera et al., 2018, for rodents).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Southern Africa's Great Escarpment as an amphitheater of climate‐driven diversification and a buffer against future climate change in bats

Taylor,

Kearney,

Clark

et al. 2024

Global Change Biology

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Hosting 1460 plant and 126 vertebrate endemic species, the Great Escarpment (hereafter, Escarpment) forms a semi‐circular “amphitheater” of mountains girdling southern Africa from arid west to temperate east. Since arid and temperate biota are usually studied separately, earlier studies overlooked the biogeographical importance of the Escarpment as a whole. Bats disperse more widely than other mammalian taxa, with related species and intraspecific lineages occupying both arid and temperate highlands of the Escarpment, providing an excellent model to address this knowledge gap. We investigated patterns of speciation and micro‐endemism from modeled past, present, and future distributions in six clades of southern African bats from three families (Rhinolophidae, Cistugidae, and Vespertilionidae) having different crown ages (Pleistocene to Miocene) and biome affiliations (temperate to arid). We estimated mtDNA relaxed clock dates of key divergence events across the six clades in relation both to biogeographical features and patterns of phenotypic variation in crania, bacula and echolocation calls. In horseshoe bats (Rhinolophidae), both the western and eastern “arms” of the Escarpment have facilitated dispersals from the Afrotropics into southern Africa. Pleistocene and pre‐Pleistocene “species pumps” and temperate refugia explained observed patterns of speciation, intraspecific divergence and, in two cases, mtDNA introgression. The Maloti‐Drakensberg is a center of micro‐endemism for bats, housing three newly described or undescribed species. Vicariance across biogeographic barriers gave rise to 29 micro‐endemic species and intraspecific lineages whose distributions were congruent with those identified in other phytogeographic and zoogeographic studies. Although Köppen–Geiger climate models predict a widespread replacement of current temperate ecosystems in southern Africa by tropical or arid ecosystems by 2070–2100, future climate Maxent models for 13 bat species (all but one of those analyzed above) showed minimal range changes in temperate species from the eastern Escarpment by 2070, possibly due to the buffering effect of mountains to climate change.

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