. Evidence for shared refugia based on alleles frequency gradients of genomic data among five alpine Alaskan small mammal species?

OLAVE, M.; HE, Q.; KNOWLES, L.

Austin, Texas

Congreso; Evolution Meeting; 2016

Current genetic diversity and species-specific suitable environmental conditionniches provides information to infer reconstruct their paleo-distribution. This can be accomplished by new phylogeography methods that allow studying both sources of information in an integrative approaches. In particular, the recently method proposed byPsi statistics by Peter and Slatkin (2013), that seeks for clines in haplotypes frequency using genomic data. Through the correlation of geographic distances of populations and the Psi statistics, one can, and also incorporates the geographic distribution, allows to potentially infer expansion origins and represents a great advance to study possible past share refugia among co-distributed species. Here Wwe expanded the previously availablthe inferencee method to incorporate environmental heterogeneity in a given map, to represent a more realistic modelleast cost paths of dispersal based on species niches to improve the biological realism of reconstructed origins. Here wWe applied this methodology to study shared or unique refugia of five mammal species from Alaska (hoary marmot, singing vole, brown lemming, artic ground squirrel and collared pika), to infer past refugia. We expanded the previously available method to incorporate environmental heterogeneity in a given map, to represent a more realistic model. Our results show overlap among possible refugia among the hoary marmot, the artic ground squirrel and the singing vole, while the brown lemming and the collared pika displayed unique refugia. We discuss our finding in contrast to previous hypotheses (mostly based in mtDNA), as well as robustness and limitation of this methodology.