A VIEW INTO THE PHYLOGEOGRAPHY, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY, AND SPECIATION IN THE WORLD'S MOST BASAL CANID, UROCYON SPP

Ben Sacks; eric.renger@gmail.com; Mark Statham, Natalie Goddard, Laurel Serieys, Seth Riley

We investigated cross-continental and regional phylogeography of Urocyon, the most basal extant lineage of canid in the world. In North America, many temperate forest-associated vertebrates split into eastern and western lineages due to Pleistocene aridification in the central portion of the continent, yet currently occur in continuous distributions due to secondary contact associated with Holocene expansions. Because of the antiquity of Urocyon in the fossil record on both ends of the North American continent, we investigated whether gray foxes Urocyon exhibited a deep, cryptic divergence associated with eastern and western refugia. Sequence divergence and coalescent simulations based on mitochondrial DNA sequences from 180 foxes indicated divergence between eastern and western foxes approximately 500,000 years ago, which is comparable to that between recognized sister species within the Canidae. Second, we investigated the regional phylogeography of gray (U. cinereoargenteus) and island (U. littoralis) foxes associated with the putative western refugium. Analysis of mtDNA and microsatellites revealed some unexpected findings, prompting new questions about the origins of island foxes relative to contemporary mainland gray foxes.

Molecular Ecology and Wildlife Conservation Genetics