Microtus, Schrank, 1798

Jackson, Donavan J & Cook, Joseph A, 2020, A precarious future for distinctive peripheral populations of meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus), Journal of Mammalogy 101 (1), pp. 36-51 : 41

Microtus Phylogeny Inferred from Cytochrome b

The evolutionary relationships for 64 species of Microtus were reconstructed based on Cytb sequences (n = 118), producing the most comprehensive phylogeny for the genus to date. We included two recently proposed species ( M. gromovi — Bannikova et al. 2010; M. atticus — Rovatsos and Giagia-Athanasopoulou 2012), two species of questionable status ( M. rossiaemeridionalis and M. obscurus — Musser and Carleton 2005), and the first mitochondrial sequences for M. breweri . Because the GenBank accessions were derived from multiple studies, sequences ranged from 489 to 1,140 bp in length. Relationships across the phylogeny are largely congruent with previous studies (Conroy and Cook 2000; Jaarola et al. 2004; Martinkova et al. 2012); however, M. breweri is shown to be nested within M. pennsylvanicus ( Fig. 3 ). Genetic distances (K2P shown below with p -distance included in Supplementary Data SD4) between 13 sister species pairs recovered on this phylogeny averaged 5% (range 1.5–9.7%). Lowest divergence values were between the controversial species M. rossiaemeridionalis – M. levis (0.2%), followed by M. abbreviatus – M. miurus (1.5%), and M. bavaricus – M. liechtensteini (1.6%), while highest sister species divergence was between M. daghestanicus – M. subterraneus (9.7%).

Figures

Fig. 3.—A Bayesian cytochrome b (Cytb) gene tree for 63 species of Microtus. Posterior probability of> 0.95 are depicted by asterisk. The inset shows M. breweri nested within M. pennsylvanicus. Two species of Chionomys were used as outgroups and are shown at the bottom of the tree (C. roberti and C. nivalis).