Phylogenetic assessment of voles of the Guentheri Group (Mammalia: Microtus) in Turkish Thrace and Western Anatolia
2017
Yiğit, N. | Çetintürk, D. | Çolak, E.
Speciation and the phylogenetic relationships of species in the Guentheri Group in Turkey, which have a diploid chromosome number of 54, were studied using mitochondrial mt-co1, mt-cyb and 12S rRNA gene markers. A Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) tree clearly separated the Thrace and western and southeastern Anatolia populations. Genetic distance values (d) appeared relatively high in the southeastern Anatolia population (Microtus guentheri) from other populations, but rather low distance values were found between Thrace and western Anatolia populations. Our findings support the earlier classification of M. guentheri as a different species that previously split from the basal population of western Anatolia. However, Kimura two-parameter (K2P) values greater than 10% are generally accepted for specification, and they were lower than this in all groups. So, the genetic distances of the Turkish Thrace and western Anatolia populations do not support the suggestion that the western Anatolia population is a separate species. But this value is sometimes very low in newly evolved and approximate species. Thus, the populations of Turkish Thrace and western Anatolia are tentatively referred to Microtus hartingi due to the geographical separation of the Dardanelle and Bosphorus Straits for fossorial and surface-dwelling species even in the glacial connections.
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