Genetics, Morphology, and Echolocation Variation within Genus Emballonura from Malaysia
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 differentiat...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Final Year Project Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS)
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39703/3/Muhammad%20Hazim%20bin%20Abu%20Bakar%20%28fulltext%29.pdf http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39703/ |
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| Summary: | 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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