Phylogeography and predicted distribution of African-Arabian and Malagasy populations of giant mastiff bats, Otomops spp. (Chiroptera: Molossidae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Otomops martiensseni is sparsely distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa and southwestern Arabia (Yemen). Otomops madagascariensis from the dry portions of Madagascar is widely recognised to be a distinct species. Based on mitochondrial DNA sequences of the cytochrome b gene (1,004 base pairs; n = 50) and the control region (D-loop, 290 base pairs; n = 52), two Oriental outgroup species (O. wroughtoni and O. cf. formosus) formed a monophyletic clade that was the sister group to the Afro-Malagasy taxa, composed of O. martiensseni and O. madagascariensis. Within the Afro-Malagasy clade, we discovered three well-supported but genetically similar clades (inter-clade genetic distances of 3.4–4.4%) from 1) north-eastern Africa and Arabia, 2) African mainland except northeast Africa, and 3) Madagascar. Taken together, haplotype networks, estimated divergence times, regional species richness and historical demographic data tentatively suggested dispersal from Asia to Africa and Madagascar. To understand ecological determinants of phylogeographic, biogeographic and genetic structure, we assessed the potential distribution of O. martiensseni throughout sub-Saharan Africa with ecological niche modelling (MaxEnt) based on known point localities (n = 60). The species is predicted to occur mainly in woodlands and forests and in areas of rough topography. Continuity of suitable habitats supported our inferred high levels of continental gene flow (relatively low genetic distances), and suggested that factors other than habitat suitability have resulted in the observed phylogeographic structure (e.g., seasonal mass migrations of insects that might be tracked by these bats). Based on a Bayesian relaxed clock approach and two fossil calibration dates, we estimated that African and Oriental clades diverged at 4.2 Mya, Malagasy and African clades at 1.5 Mya, and African clades 1 and 2 at 1.2 Mya. Integrating phylogenetic, phylogeographic, population genetic and ecological approaches holds promise for a better understanding of biodiversity patterns and evolutionary processes.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".