Dormice (family Gliridae) are an ancient group of rodents. It was fully dominant in the Oligocene and Early Miocene, and its current diversity is represented by a few extant species. A Kazakhstani endemic, the desert dormouse Selevinia betpakdalaensis is one of the most enigmatic dormouse species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe subgenus Stenocranius contains two cryptic species: Lasiopodomys gregalis (subdivided into three allopatrically distributed and genetically well-isolated lineages A, B, and C) and Lasiopodomys raddei. To identify karyotype characteristics of this poorly studied cryptic species complex, we used comparative cytogenetic analysis of 138 individuals from 41 localities in South Siberia and Mongolia. A detailed description of the L.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe extraction of museum DNA from a unique collection of samples of the "" species complex, which comprises local endemics of Central and West Asia, allowed us to determine their inter- and intragroup relationships. The first step of this study was the re-evaluation of heavily damaged type specimens of via a microcomputed-tomography-based cybertaxonomic approach (CTtax), which enabled a precise description of the species' morphology; three-dimensional models of the cybertypes were made available through the MorphoBank Repository. We developed the "AProMaDesU" pipeline on the basis of five requirements for micro-CT-based cyber-datasets in relation to mammalian collections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArvicolinae is one of the most impressive placental radiations with over 150 extant and numerous extinct species that emerged since the Miocene in the Northern Hemisphere. The phylogeny of Arvicolinae has been studied intensively for several decades using morphological and genetic methods. Here, we sequenced 30 new mitochondrial genomes to better understand the evolutionary relationships among the major tribes and genera within the subfamily.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mitochondrial genes encode proteins involved in oxidative phosphorylation. Variations in lifestyle and ecological niche can be directly reflected in metabolic performance. Subterranean rodents represent a good model for testing hypotheses on adaptive evolution driven by important ecological shifts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe subterranean voles of the genus are species of subfamily Arvicolinae well adapted to underground life. In this paper, we report the assemblies of complete mitochondrial genomes for three mole voles from genus - northern mole vole (16,376 bp), transcaucasian mole vole (16,540 bp), and southern mole vole s (16,388 bp). Each of three mitogenomes encode for 12S and 16S rRNAs, 22 tRNAs, 13 protein-coding genes, and D-loop in the characteristic arrangement of subfamily Arvicolinae (Rodentia: Cricetidae).
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November 2020
In this article, we present the nearly complete mitochondrial genome of the Subalpine Kashmir vole (Arvicolinae, Cricetidae, Rodentia), assembled using data from Illumina next-generation sequencing (NGS) of the DNA from a century-old museum specimen. De novo assembly consisted of 16,341 bp and included all mitogenome protein-coding genes as well as 12S and 16S RNAs, tRNAs and D-loop. Using the alignment of protein-coding genes of 14 previously published Arvicolini tribe mitogenomes, seven Clethrionomyini mitogenomes, and also and outgroups, we conducted phylogenetic reconstructions based on a dataset of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs) under maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference.
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