Assessing species number and genetic diversity of the Mountainsnails (Oreohelicidae)
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Assessing species number and genetic diversity of the Mountainsnails (Oreohelicidae) T. Mason Linscott1,2 · Kathleen Weaver3 · Vanessa Morales4 · Christine E. Parent1,2 Received: 17 January 2020 / Accepted: 10 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract One of the current challenges facing conservation biologists is a lack of resolution of species boundaries in threatened groups residing in at-risk areas. This is particularly key for habitats like calcareous outcrops that are known to harbor a high degree of endemic species that may also possess extensive morphological variation. Here, we construct the first time-calibrated phylogeny and evaluate species number of the limestone endemic Mountainsnails (Oreohelicidae), a highly-threatened and phenotypically variable family of land snails from Western North America, using sequence fragments of the mitochondrial gene Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I (COI) from 50 recognized taxonomic species and subspecies. We found four highly supported clades that span wide geographic areas from southern Canada to northern Mexico. Using three species delimitation approaches, we identified a largely concordant set of 16 putative species, which represents less than a third the expected number of species given the current taxonomy and our dataset composition. Our results reveal that this is largely a result of two of the delimitation approaches lumping much of the taxonomic diversity of Oreohelicidae into a single species that possesses remarkable shell form variation and convergence. Moreover, we discuss the suitability of these approaches to delimiting clades with recent divergence, which is not uncommon for limestone endemic fauna and flora. To improve management decisions in montane limestone endemics, our research highlights the need for increased molecular and ecological studies of these isolated and phenotypically variable species. Keywords Limestone · Oreohelix · Species delimitation · Land snail · Phylogenetics
Introduction Regions of high resource availability tend to be associated with high biodiversity (Storch et al. 2005; Cardinale et al. 2009; Cline et al. 2018) and are often sources for conflicts Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-020-01302-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * T. Mason Linscott [email protected] 1
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA
2
Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies (IBEST), Biological Sciences, Moscow, ID, USA
3
Office of the Provost, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
4
Office of Grant Evaluation and Statistical Support, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
between extractive industries and environmental agencies over access to and protection of resources (Sonter et al. 2018). This conflict is particularly salient for the management of sensitive species restricted in distribution to areas rich in minerals targete
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