Beyond mtDNA: nuclear gene flow suggests taxonomic oversplitting in the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In southern Alberta and north-central Montana, there is substantial mtDNA sequence divergence between two groups of the little brown bat, Myotis lucifugus (LeConte, 1831), previously thought to be subspecies ( Myotis lucifugus lucifugus and Myotis lucifugus carissima ) but recently hypothesized to be species. We tested this hypothesis using population genetic techniques. Using nuclear microsatellite markers (10 loci), we found a lack of differentiation between these two groups of bats (ascribed based on mitochondrial hypervariable region II sequence), suggesting interbreeding was sympatric. Our findings add to the recent discovery that M. l. lucifugus haplotypes are found throughout the range previously thought to be only M. l. carissima, suggesting widespread sympatry and extensively mixed gene pools, thus refuting the cryptic species hypothesis. Clinal morphology and individual variation demonstrated the impossibility to differentiate groups based on original subspecies definitions. The lack of geographic and morphological boundaries, in addition to the likelihood that the interbreeding observed in this study is occurring across western North America, suggests that no line can be drawn between these two groups. We thus suggest that the carissima subspecies designation be dropped. This study highlights the importance of investigating nuclear gene flow in widely sympatric animals suspected of being cryptic genetic species, and has important implications for applications of the DNA Barcoding Project.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".