Historical DNA of rare yellow-eared bats Vampyressa Thomas, 1900 (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) clarifies phylogeny and species boundaries within the genus

Figures & data

Fig. 1. Distributions of the four currently recognized large-sized species of Vampyressa. Distribution polygons follow Tavares et al. (2014), Morales-Martínez et al. (2021), and Marsh et al. (2022). Filled circles indicate collecting localities of specimens that have only morphological data available and open squares represent the localities of specimens from which we obtained molecular data.

Table 1. Pairwise mean sequence divergence between species of Mesophylla and Vampyressa under the Kimura 2-parameter model, as implemented in MEGA7 for a total of 31 cytochrome b sequences (1,140 bp). Intraspecific divergence is shown in bold in the diagonal.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1 M. macconnelli	0.012
2 V. elisabethae	0.153	N/A*
3 V. melissa	0.140	0.116	0.012
4 V. voragine	0.147	0.117	0.075	0.004
5 V. pusilla	0.147	0.145	0.130	0.127	0.008
6 Vampyressa sp.	0.129	0.121	0.097	0.109	0.120	N/A*
7 V. thyone	0.136	0.126	0.112	0.117	0.119	0.047	0.014

* N = 1.

Table 2. Selected diagnostic characters of Vampyressa species.

Characters	elisabethae	m. melissa	m. sinchi	voragine	pusilla	thyone
Forearm length	36.2–37.8	34.5–37.7	39.1–41.5	36.9–37.8	32.3–34.3	29.3–32.3
Greatest Length of the skull	22.9–23	21.2–22.6	23.3–23.7	20.7–21.3	19.0–20.6	17.1–19.2
Metacarpal formulae	III and IV subequal, V longest	III and IV subequal, V longest	III and V subequal, IV shortest	III and V subequal, IV shortest	III and V subequal, IV shortest	III, IV, and V subequal
Uropatagium	sparse fur only ventral in midline	densely fringed	sparsely fringed, longest in midline	densely fringed, longest in midline	without fringe	without fringe
Anterior premaxillae	inclined at 80o	inclined at 60o	inclined at 60o	inclined at 60o	inclined at 60o	inclined at 60o
Dorsal emargination of nasals	short	deep	very deep	shallow	deep	deep
Median premaxillary pit	absent	with a medial pit	with a medial pit	with a medial pit	with a medial pit	with a medial pit
Mesethmoid plate	Swollen	anterior edge thin	anterior edge thin	anterior edge thin	anterior edge thin	anterior edge thin
Postglenoid process	less developed, not extending below the hamular process of pterygoid	less developed, not extending below the hamular process of pterygoid	developed, extends below the level of hamular process of pterygoid	less developed, not extending below the hamular process of pterygoid	less developed, not extending below the hamular process of pterygoid	less developed, not extending below the hamular process of pterygoid
Shape of palate	flat	domed	domed	domed	domed	domed
Mesopterygoid fossa	as long as it is wide	as long as it is wide	longer than wide	as long as it is wide	as long as it is wide	as long as it is wide
Lateropostero extension of palate	postdental palate weakly depressed, its lateral margins rounded	postdental extension of the palate flat	postdental extension of the palate flat, sharp margins with winglike projections	?	?	?
Sphenorbital opening	fissure	foramen	foramen	foramen	foramen	foramen
Foramen magnum	transversely ovoid	Rounded	rounded	Rounded	rounded	Rounded
Upper incisors	unequally bilobate or weakly trilobate	evenly bilobed	unequally bilobed	unevenly bilobed	unevenly bilobed	unevenly bilobed
Lower third molar	absent	present	present	absent	absent	absent

Fig. 2. Tree estimated in BEAST based on mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences of Vampyressa and Mesophylla. Vertical bars show the comparison of the five species delimitation results as follows: sGMYC, single-threshold Generalized Mixed Yule-Coalescent (GMYC); bGMYC, Bayesian Implementation of the GMYC (using a posterior probability threshold of P = 0.6); bPTP, Bayesian Implementation of the Poisson tree processes (PTP) model; mPTP, multirate Poisson tree processes model; ABGD, Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (using a prior maximum distance P of 0.011 ≤ P ≤ 0.030). The six putative species are indicated with different colours: Vampyressa thyone (pink), Vampyressa sp. (grey), V. pusilla (orange), V. melissa (green), V. voragine (yellow), V. elisabethae (dark orange), and Mesophylla macconnelli (blue). The ultrametric gene tree shown was estimated in BEAST. Acronyms: FMNH, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA; ICN, Colección de mamíferos ‘Alberto Cadena García’, Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia; MZFC, Mammal Collection of the Zoology Museum, UNAM, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico; TK, TTU, Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA; USNM, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA.

Fig. 3. Histogram of pairwise probabilities of conspecificity for the 35 sequences included in our analyses. Values were obtained from the Bayesian implementation of the Generalized Mixed Yule-Coalescent species delimitation model.

Tavares, V. C., Gardner, A. L., Ramírez-Chaves, H. E., & Velazco, P. M. (2014). Systematics of Vampyressa melissa Thomas, 1926 (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae), with descriptions of two new species of Vampyressa. American Museum Novitates, 3813, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1206/3813.1

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