Nuclear phylogeography reveals strong impacts of gene flow in big brown bats

Aim: Understanding speciation mechanisms requires disentangling processes that promote and erode population-level divergence. Three hypotheses are raised that contemporary population structure is mainly shaped by refugial divergence, post-glacial gene flow, or combined effects of both. Testing these hypotheses requires range-wide phylogeography and integrative analyses across scales. Here we aim to 1) re-estimate the previously unresolved nuclear phylogeography of a widespread bat; 2) test the above three phylogeographic hypotheses; and 3) inform conservation management under climate change.
Location: North America including Caribbean.
Taxon: The big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus).
Methods: We collected range-wide samples and genome-wide markers using restriction site-associated DNA sequencing. Population structure was analyzed by clustering methods and spatial estimations. Nuclear phylogeography was estimated using tree methods (concatenation and coalescent) and network analyses (TreeMix...