Species identification for small mammals of Western Himalayas using genetics and morphometrics

Abstract

Rodents are diverse yet one of the most neglected mammalian group. The Himalayas, which are known as a biodiversity hotspot remain poorly studied in terms of rodent species assemblages. We used Cytochrome b phylogeny and Multivariate statistics together to identify the species of forest mice of genus Apodemus and voles of genus Alticola from Western Himalayas. From genetic data, we identified Apodemus species from all the sampling locations as Apodemus pallipes. Some of the individuals of Apodemus were identified as Mus musculus castaneus from both genetic and morphometric data. We suspect that some of the individuals identified as A.pallipes individuals might be of Apodemus rusiges because ranges of these two species broadly overlap in the Western Himalayas. We identified two species for Alticola genus, Alticola barakshin, Alticola montosa and one from Hyperacrius genus, Hyperacrius fertilis. The two clusters from our genetic data are not sister to any of the known species. Ideally, we would identify exact species status by comparing our genetic data to those from voucher specimens. We attempted to generate the latter with specimens from BNHS, but preliminary results did not yield any target sequences. As a result, for the purpose of present study, we identified them as Neodon sp., and Alticola sp. We also built species distribution models to identify suitable habitats for the species with ranges in Western Himalayas. Our distribution models revealed suitable habitats outside existing known ranges, which was consistent with our field sampling. Future work will include work on museum specimens and sequencing nuclear genes to infer the colonisation history of these two genera.