ANÁLISE FILOGENÉTICA DE ESPÉCIES BRASILEIRAS PERTENCENTES ÀS FAMÍLIAS VESPERTILIONIDAE E MOLOSSIDAE (CHIROPTERA)

Abstract

The Chiroptera order is the second largest in terms of species number. After molecular and cytogenetic studies, some authors subdivided the order into two suborders, Yinpterochiroptera (Megachiroptera) and Yangochiroptera (Microchiroptera). In Brazil, the species belong only to families within the Yangochiroptera suborder, with more than 170 species described. The phylogeny, at the family level, is controversial in some studies, being an important point in phylogenetic studies. Thus, this study analyzed the molecular phylogeny of the Molossidae and Vespertilionidae families using one species of each family collected in the Atlantic Forest region in southern Brazil, and including existing Brazilian species that are present in the GenBank database. Two molecular markers were used, one nuclear (RAG2) and the other mitochondrial (cytochrome b), and the phylogeny was obtained performing neighbor-joining (NJ), Bayesian and maximum parsimony (MP) analyses. For the Vespertilionidae family, the nuclear gene was the only one that showed to be a good marker to infer phylogeny. The results showed the formation of monophyletic groups already detected in the literature, as well as some differences within the vespertilionids. For the Molossidae family, both genes showed good amplification and were used for phylogenetic analysis. As a result, it was also seen monophyletic groups within the family, however, inconsistencies were found that do not match with what is described in the literature. Thus, some results were effective when compared to previous studies and, in addition, the data collected in GenBank brought new information for the two families present in southern Brazil. However, more studies need to be performed in order to obtain a better glance of the evolutionary history these Chiroptera families.