Vertebrates section
Museum of natural history of the City of Geneva
Muséum d’histoire naturelle de la ville de Genève
Route de Malagnou, 1
1208 Genève

Dr. Manuel Ruedi, manuel.ruedi@ville-ge.ch, +41224186320

Topics: Speciation, Phylogeography

The bat Myotis nattereri in Europe has been shown to be a complex of several independent species. One of these cryptic lineages was described as a new species (M. crypticus) with a presumed distribution centred on Western Europe. More recent studies suggest that this new taxon and M. nattereri might hybridize in different parts of this range, including Switzerland, but no firm data confirm this interpretation. Using a series of nuclear DNA markers on specimens sampled in areas of potential sympatry of these two taxa, we aim to clarify this taxonomic situation by quantifying the level of gene flow between those two bats.