Genetics, Morphology, and Echolocation Variation within Genus Emballonura from Malaysia

Muhammad Hazim, Abu Bakar (2022) Genetics, Morphology, and Echolocation Variation within Genus Emballonura from Malaysia. [Final Year Project Report] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Malaysia is a biodiversity hotspot with many endemic species. The Emballonura genus is an extensive group of insectivorous bats belonging to the Emballonuridae family. Their sheath-tail structure and distinct morphology characterized the genus. It is important to study the taxonomical differentiation of the members from genus Emballonura. This is extremely significant in Malaysia, where there are only a few studies on this group and misidentifications occur. In this study, three characteristics of insectivorous bat species identification were studied: genetic analysis, morphological measures, and echolocation variances. Through genetic analysis on the sequences of mtDNA at COI region, three phylogenetic trees were constructed showing a similar topology and clade members with the pairwise genetic distance computation to support the differences. The group that shows distinct clade was only Emballonura monticola from Peninsular and the outgroup. While the other group such as Emballonura alecto from Sarawak, Emballonura monticola from Sarawak, Emballonura alecto from Kalimantan and Emballonura alecto from Philippines formed their own clade with low bootstrap value. The genetic distance between Emballonura alecto from Sarawak and Emballonura monticola from Peninsular is 8.78% which confirms their designation as separate species. However genetic distance between Emballonura alecto from Sarawak and the other groups are less than 5% excluding the outgroup. The analysis of morphological measurements using Discrimination Function Analysis (DFA) showed an overlap of the character functions in the scatter plot of this analysis for different species of Emballonura. The echolocation calls of multiple Emballonura individuals were reported and compared based on call parameters. However, it is insufficient in determining the species because the call structure varies depending on the environment during the recording of the sound. As a result, integrating these three characteristics is critical for a more reliable species identification procedure.

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