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A hybrid zone between the Kirillov and Petchora chromosomal races of the common shrew (Sorex araneus L., 1758) in northeastern European Russia: a preliminary description

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Abstract

Karyotypes of the Petchora and Kirillov chromosomal races of the common shrew differ by six Robertsonian metacentrics with monobrachial homology, such that interracial F1 hybrids produce a ring-of-six configuration at meiosis I and are expected to suffer infertility. Mapping of 52 karyotyped individuals by using a unique global positioning system (GPS) revealed that the Kirillov-Petchora hybrid zone is positioned close to the river Mezen, which separated these races, and so may limit the migration of shrews across the contact zone. Although the population density of shrews was found to be markedly different with respect to habitats, the zone runs through a mosaic of habitats that are similar for both the Petchora and the Kirillov sides. This is one of the narrowest chromosomal hybrid zones among those studied in Sorex araneus with a standard cline width of about 1 km. The center of the cline is located on a bank occupied by the Petchora race at a distance of 0.4 km away from a riverine barrier. Interestingly, both the Kirillov race and hybrid individuals were found on a small island in the middle of a river fully flooded each spring. The frequencies of karyotypic variants allow us to consider the zone as an example of a bimodal zone. New Robertsonian and de novo whole-arm reciprocal translocations (WART) chromosomal variants found in the zone could be regarded as evidences of current evolutionary process in chromosomal hybrid zones.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Anatoly Bobretsov from the Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve (Komi Republic) for assistance in collecting shrews and Dr. Anton Burakov from Lomonosov Moscow State University for help in sample preparation during a field work in 2008 as well as providing cell culturing in his laboratory. We are grateful to Dr. Tatyana Demidova for karyotyping shrews in 2005. This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant no. 12-04-00937).

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  1. A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, 33 Leninsky prospect, 119071, Moscow, Russia

    Svetlana V. Pavlova & Nikolay A. Shchipanov

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  1. Svetlana V. Pavlova
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Correspondence to Svetlana V. Pavlova.

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Communicated by: Jan M. Wójcik

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Pavlova, S.V., Shchipanov, N.A. A hybrid zone between the Kirillov and Petchora chromosomal races of the common shrew (Sorex araneus L., 1758) in northeastern European Russia: a preliminary description. Acta Theriol 59, 415–426 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13364-014-0183-z

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