A tale of four bears: Environmental signal on the phylogeographical patterns within the extant Ursus species

Aim: Assessing the relevance of niche evolution in the diversification patterns and geographical distribution of species driven by climate remains a challenge. We apply an integrative approach to evaluate the role of the environment on the phylogeography of bear species, incorporating fossil data to characterize the changes in the ecological niche through time. We evaluate our approach with the four extant species of bears within Ursus, the best represented taxon in the fossil record of the family Ursidae.

Location: Eurasia and North America.

Taxa: Asian black bear, Ursus thibetanus; American black bear, U. americanus; Brown bear, U. arctos; and Polar bear, U. maritimus.

Methods: We built a genetic and a geographical database from all published mitochondrial DNA sequences and of species occurrence records. We defined the most significant climatic variables based on each species ecological realm using correlation matrices, and characterized the ecological niches and existing env..., , CONTENTS:

Present Occurrences.csv        <--- Present occurrences of the four Ursus species

Fossil Occurrences LGM.csv    <--- Fossil occurrences of the four Ursus species (Last Glacial Maximum)

Environmental Variables.csv    <--- Environmental values of the present occurrences and their respective 'M' areas

Ursus Haplotypes.nex        <--- Alignment of unique haplotypes of the four Ursus species

Ursus Haplotypes Bios.csv    <--- Estimated environmental values of the haplotypes