Crocidura suaveolens gueldenstaedtii (Pallas, 1811)

Shpirer, Erez, Haddas-Sasson, Michal, Spivak-Glater, Maya, Feldstein, Tamar, Meiri, Shai & Huchon, Dorothée, 2021, Molecular relationships of the Israeli shrews (Eulipotyphla: Soricidae) based on cytochrome b sequences, Mammalia (Warsaw, Poland) 85 (1), pp. 79-89 : 86

4.3 Crocidura suaveolens gueldenstaedtii

The phylogenetic analysis indicated that all Israeli “ C. suaveolens ” sequences are part of clade V – the ‘ gueldenstaedtii ’ clade ( Dubey et al. 2007a), and close to the Turkish and Georgian sequences ( Figure 5 ). While the Israeli populations represent the edge of this species complex range, they do not present a mitochondrial genetic difference from the rest of its clade, unlike the situation in C. leucodon . This may be due to their larger population size and wider range in Israel compared to that of C. leucodon ( Figure 1B ). However, it is also possible that genetic differences exist in the nuclear genome. Based on the high similarity between the Israeli and Balkan sequences we agree with the status of “least concern” listed by the IUCN ( Palomo et al. 2016). Our molecular cyt b data unequivocally place Israeli ‘suaveolens’ specimens within the ‘ gueldenstaedtii’ clade. The specific status of the form awaits a thorough taxonomic revision, including an examination of animals from the type localities, preferably alongside specimens from the type localities of other members of the complex (e.g., C. ‘gmelini’, C. suaveolens monacha , C. portali ) as well as phylogenetic information from nuclear markers. Until such a study is carried out, we tentatively refer to Israeli specimens as members of C. suaveolens gueldenstaedtii .

Figures

Figure 1: Shrew sample locations. A. samples sequenced in this work. B. shrew specimen present in the Steinhardt National Collection of Natural History, Zoological Museum at Tel Aviv University (Israel). The two major biomes of Israel: the Mediterranean biome, and the desert, are indicated in green and yellow,respectively. Red squares, blues stars, green circles and black triangles indicate C. ramona, S. etruscus, C. suaveolens gueldenstaedtii and C. leucodon specimen respectively.The museum records encompass 79 C. leucodon, 594 C. suaveolens gueldenstaedtii, 13 C. ramona and 443 S. etruscus.

Figure 5: Maximum likelihood tree of Suncus cytb sequences. Phylogenetic relationships inferred from a matrix of 1,140 nucleotide positions for 36 individuals. Maximum likelihood bootstrap supports above 50% and Bayesian posterior probabilities above 0.70 are indicated near the corresponding node separated with a slash. Sequences obtained in this work are indicated in bold. Authors of sequence data in Supplementary Table S6.