Nevada shrews
In partnership with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, I am part of a project from the Waits lab aiming at barcoding all the species of shrews in the state of Nevada. I have been using both mitochondrial (cyt-b) and nuclear data (RADseq) to evaluate the phylogenetic relations between Sorex and Notiosorex species potentially found in the state, while developing a SNP panel for the rapid and cost effective identification of shews using minimally invasive and non-invasive sampling. For this project we have had the support of multiple museums and their curators for sampling (thank you all!).
Our ongoing work has shown that there are multiple species that have intraspecific variation that could be potentially represent different species. We also found that there are species that are paraphyletic, and thus, likely represent species complexes rather than true species. Finally, we found instances of hybridization between species, potentially justifying a large proportion of the morphological misclassifications detected. Shrews are always a bucket full of surprises... |