Asynchronous demographic dynamics of rodent community in low latitude Asia

Abstract There is increasing evidence that demographic history and phylogeographic consequences of past climate changes unfolded locally and varied from region to region. Despite the high rodent species diversity and endemism in low latitude Asia, how they have responded to the past climatic fluctuations remains unexplored. In the present study, we trapped 253 murine individuals and sequenced their mitochondrial COI gene sequence. A total of ten species belonging to five genera were recognized through phylogenetic analyses. The results of divergence time estimation showed that the most common ancestors for all recognized species occurred in the Pleistocene. Signals of demographic expansion were detected in six species by at least one test and the events of sharp population size increase occurred asynchronously among species. The demographic expansion during the glaciation periods was corroborated by the expanded suitable distributional areas predicted by ecological niche modelling. The diversified demographic histories of rat communities in low-latitude Asia suggested that species might have responded to past regional environmental changes in an individualistic way.