Publication details
Diversity and genome-level molecular phylogeny of African giant shrews (Crocidura olivieri species complex)
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| Citation | |
| Description | The African giant white-toothed shrews, Crocidura olivieri species complex (Eulipotyphla, Soricidae), are one of the most common and abundant insectivorous small terrestrial mammals in sub-Saharan Africa. They inhabit a wide range of habitats (including forests, grasslands, as well as villages and cities) and their size reaches 24 cm of length (including tail) and 65 g of weight, being thus predisposed to play an important ecological role in ecosystems. Despite this importance, their diversity and evolutionary history is only partly understood – especially the evolutionary relationships among genetic lineages in the complex are not resolved and the species are not sufficiently delimited. From previous analyses (based primarily on mtDNA) the species C. olivieri seems to be paraphyletic and the whole species complex includes several other valid taxa (C. flavescens, C. fulvastra, C. goliath, C. somalica and C. viaria) as well as many synonyms. In our contribution we provide a phylogeny based on reduced-genome SNP data (produced by ddRAD sequencing over the whole genome), which helps to disentangle the complex taxonomic situation and provides suggestions for species delimitation and evolutionary history description taking into account the geographical and temporal context. The research was funded by the French project MNHN – ATM Blanche 2019 and the Czech Science Foundation project No. 18-17398S. |
| Related projects: |