Sternberg Museum of Natural History Faculty Publications
 

Source Publication

Journal of Mammalogy

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-1999

Volume

80

Issue

2

First Page

545

Last Page

552

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

DOI

10.2307/1383300

Abstract

The taxonomic status of the Arizona myotis (Myotis occultus) is uncertain. Although the taxon was described as a distinct species and currently is regarded as such by some authors, others have noted what they interpreted as intergradation with the little brown bat (M. lucifugus carissima) near the Colorado-New Mexico state line. In this study, we used protein electrophoresis to compare bats of these nominal taxa. We examined 20 loci from 142 specimens referable to M. occultus and M. lucifugus from New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Nine of the 20 loci were polymorphic. Results show that there were high similarities among samples, no fixed alleles, and minor divergence from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Our results suggest that the two nominal taxa represent only one species and that M. occultus should be regarded as a subspecies of M. lucifugus.

Comments

This article was originally published in The Journal of Mammalogy.

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