Molecular systematics and Pleistocene biogeography of Mesoamerican flying squirrels

TLDR: It is suggested that the conservation status of Mesoamerican flying squirrels be considered data deficient at a minimum with a high potential for future studies to reveal that many populations are near threatened or vulnerable.

Abstract: Populations of flying squirrels from the Mesoamerican highlands represent the least understood members of the genus Glaucomys. Traditionally, these populations have been considered to be southern disjuncts of the southern flying squirrel (G. volans), a species that is widespread across the deciduous and mixed-deciduous forests of eastern North America. The limited number of museum specimens of Mesoamerican flying squirrels has made discerning the systematic and biogeographic relationships of these populations a challenge. We used ancient DNA techniques to extract, amplify, and sequence a 571-base pair segment of the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome-b gene from 22 of 34 available museum specimens. Mesoamerican flying squirrel data were combined with homologous sequences from representative populations of Glaucomys from the United States and Canada. This combined data set was analyzed using maximum-likelihood and Bayesian methods. Results indicate that G. volans is monophyletic and contains 2 monophyle...