Hipposideros armiger (Photo T. Kingston)
An international team of scientist, including one of the SEABCRU committee members Dr Pipat Soisook, published results of the study of the population history of Hipposideros armiger, a fairly common cave-dwelling Leaf-nosed bat in the Oriental region, in the latest issue of Journal of Biogeography. The authors examined the evolutionary history of this species using two mtDNA regions and seven nuclear microsatellite loci of specimens from South China, mainland Southeast Asia and the South Himalayas. The study found that H. armiger comprises two distinct mtDNA clades with seven subclades. The results revealed there were two population expansion events at about 0.62 Ma and about 0.25 Ma. The authors suggested that divergence and population expansion of H. armiger was related to Pleistocene climatic changes.
Find out more: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jbi.12163/abstract
Reference: Lin, A.-Q., G. Csorba, L.-F.Li, T.-L.Jiang, G.-J.Lu, V. D. Thong, P. Soisook, K.-P.Sun, and J. Feng. 2014. Phylogeography of Hipposideros armiger (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae) in the Oriental Region: the contribution of multiple Pleistocene glacial refugia and intrinsic factors to contemporary population genetic structure. Journal of Biogeography, 41: 317–327.
