Comparative population structure of Cynopterus fruit bats in peninsular Malaysia and southern Thailand

Abstract

The extent to which response to environmental change is mediated by species-specific ecology is an important aspect of the population histories of tropical taxa. During the Pleistocene glacial cycles and associated sea level fluctuations, the Sunda region in Southeast Asia experienced concurrent changes in landmass area and the ratio of forest to open habitat, providing an ideal setting to test the expectation that habitat associations played an important role in determining species' response to the opportunity for geographic expansion. We used mitochondrial control region sequences and six microsatellite loci to compare the phylogeographic structure and demographic histories of four broadly sympatric species of Old World fruit bats in the genus, Cynopterus. Two forest-associated species and two open-habitat generalists were sampled along a latitudinal transect in Singapore, peninsular Malaysia, and southern Thailand. Contrary to expectations based on habitat associations, the geographic scale of population structure was not concordant across ecologically similar species. We found evidence for long and relatively stable demographic history in one forest and one open-habitat species, and inferred non-coincident demographic expansions in the second forest and open-habitat species. Thus, while these results indicate that Pleistocene climate change did not have a single effect on population structure across species, a correlation between habitat association and response to environmental change was supported in only two of four species. We conclude that interactions between multiple factors, including historical and contemporary environmental change, species-specific ecology and interspecific interactions, have shaped the recent evolutionary histories of Cynopterus fruit bats in Southeast Asia.

Species diversity of small mammals at Gunung Stong State Park, Kelantan, Malaysia

“…Clinal variation in terms of size of this species was discussed by Storz et al (2001) and our observations (unpublished data) indicate that C. sphinx is not highly adaptable in Peninsular Malaysia incongruent with observations of Bates et al (2008b). Although widespread the abundance of this species is determined by the type of vegetation sampled (Campbell et al 2006). In Gunung Stong State Park the forearm length of this species was 74.52±3.87 mm and this species was netted in the hill vegetation and near bamboo plots beside the forest fringe.…”

“…brachyotis Forest has been identified (Abdullah 2003;Campbell et al 2004Campbell et al , 2006Campbell et al , 2007Jayaraj 2009;Fong 2011;Jayaraj et al 2012). We took the liberty of separating the new form C. cf.…”

High levels of population structure caused by habitat islands in the malarial vector Anopheles scanloni

“…These species have reduced genetic diversity in the south of Thailand relative to the north with evidence of recent expansion indicating that the peninsular region was recently re-colonised from the north, and that prior to this forest habitat was scarce or absent. However, another study of forest and non-forest dependent bats found inconclusive relationships between ecotype and population history (Campbell et al, 2006). In the case of An.…”

Speciation dynamics in the SE Asian tropics: Putting a time perspective on the phylogeny and biogeography of Sundaland tree squirrels, Sundasciurus

“…When repeated several times throughout the Pleistocene, this system has the potential to generate a lot of diversity. This hypothesis has been supported by low levels of genetic divergence between populations of some Sunda shelf mammals (Campbell et al, 2004(Campbell et al, , 2006Gorog et al, 2004;Lucchini et al, 2005;Roos et al, 2003). However, the vegetation during the Pleistocene glacial periods was undoubtedly very different from the present, and the interactions between climate and sea level and their effects on the distribution of the fauna and flora is complex (van den Bergh et al, 2001).…”