Abstract
Rhinolophus mehelyi (Mehely's horseshoe bat) is a vulnerable species with an increasingly fragmented distribution. In Romania, populations of R. mehelyi have experienced a dramatic decline over the past 50 years, and the current population size is estimated at only 100 adult individuals inhabiting almost exclusively the Limanu cave. In the present study, we investigated the genetic consequences of population decline for the viability of the remaining population of R. mehelyi in Romania. We sequenced and analyzed a 359-bp fragment of the mitochondrial control region from the only known Romanian population and compared it with two geographically close colonies from Bulgaria. A single haplotype was found in the Romanian population compared to 10 in the Bulgarian population, suggesting genetic isolation.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers whose comments have helped improve the paper. Bat samples were collected in Bulgaria under license from the Ministry of Environment and Water (authorization no. 57/18.04.2006). The molecular work was performed in collaboration with Rafael Zardoya from the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain. We thank him for the technical and analytical advice. We thank Sébastien Puechmaille and Rafael Zardoya for the suggestions on an earlier version of the manuscript. We also thank Raquel Alvarez, Iker Irisarri, and David Osca for their assistance in the laboratory work. This work was partially financed by the European Community through the Synthesys program (ES-TAF-121/2010).
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Communicated by: Jan Wójcik
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Dragu, A., Borissov, I. Low genetic variability of Rhinolophus mehelyi (Mehely's horseshoe bat) in Romania. Acta Theriol 56, 383–387 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-011-0043-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-011-0043-z