Data from: Dispersal out of Wallacea spurs diversification of Pteropus flying foxes, the world's largest bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera)

Aim: Islands provide opportunities for isolation and speciation. Many landmasses in the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA) are oceanic islands, and founder-event speciation is expected to be the predominant form of speciation of volant taxa on these islands. We studied the biogeographic history of flying foxes, a group with many endemic species and a predilection for islands, to test this hypothesis and infer the biogeographic origin of the group. Location: Australasia, Indo-Australian Archipelago, Madagascar, Pacific Islands Taxon: Pteropus (Pteropodidae) Methods: To infer the biogeographic history of Pteropus, we sequenced up to 6169 bp of genetic data from 10 markers and reconstructed a multilocus species tree of 34 currently recognized Pteropus species and subspecies with 3 Acerodon outgroups using BEAST and subsequently estimated ancestral areas using models implemented in BioGeoBEARS. Results: Species-level resolution was occasionally low because of slow rates of molecular evolution and/or recent divergences. Older divergences, however, were more strongly supported and allow the evolutionary history of the group to be inferred. The genus diverged in Wallacea from its common ancestor with Acerodon; founder-event speciation out of Wallacea was a common inference. Pteropus species in Micronesia and the western Indian Ocean were also inferred to result from founder-event speciation. Main conclusions: Dispersal between regions of the IAA and the islands found therein fostered diversification of Pteropus throughout the IAA and beyond. Dispersal in Pteropus is far higher than in most other volant taxa studied to date, highlighting the importance of inter-island movement in the biogeographic history of this large clade of large bats.

研究目的：岛屿为物种隔离与物种形成提供了天然实验条件。印度-澳大利亚群岛（Indo-Australian Archipelago, IAA）内多数陆块均为大洋岛，该群岛上的飞行类群（volant taxa）的物种形成模式以奠基者事件物种形成（founder-event speciation）为主。本研究以狐蝠属（Pteropus）类群为研究对象——该类群包含诸多特有物种且表现出显著的嗜岛性，旨在验证上述假说，并推断该属的生物地理起源。
研究区域：澳大拉西亚、印度-澳大利亚群岛、马达加斯加、太平洋群岛
研究类群：狐蝠属（Pteropus，狐蝠科Pteropodidae）
研究方法：为推断狐蝠属的生物地理历史，本研究对10个分子标记的共计6169 bp遗传序列进行测序，以3个 Acerodon 属物种作为外类群（outgroups），基于贝叶斯进化分析采样树（BEAST）软件构建了涵盖当前已确认的34个狐蝠属物种及亚种的多位点物种树；随后借助BioGeoBEARS软件中的模型估算祖先分布区。
研究结果：受分子进化速率缓慢和/或近期分化事件的影响，物种水平的系统发育分辨率偶有偏低。但较古老的分化事件均得到了较高的支持度，可用于推断该类群的演化历史。狐蝠属与 Acerodon 属的共同祖先在华莱士区（Wallacea）发生分化，从华莱士区向外的奠基者事件物种形成是主要的演化推断结果。此外，密克罗尼西亚（Micronesia）及西印度洋的狐蝠属物种也被推断为奠基者事件物种形成的产物。
主要结论：印度-澳大利亚群岛内部及其周边岛屿间的扩散事件，推动了狐蝠属在整个印度-澳大利亚群岛及更广范围的物种分化。狐蝠属的扩散能力远高于迄今已研究的多数其他飞行类群，凸显了岛屿间移动在这一类大型蝙蝠演化支（clade）的生物地理历史中的重要性。