Evaluating the taxonomic validity of molecular clades within tribe Arvicolini (Mammalia)

The concept of species might be interpreted in many different ways. This has impressed both the process of introducing new species and the revision of morphological species classification. According to recent studies، about 65 morphological species have been recognized for the tribe of Arvicolini. However، molecular investigations show that some of the morphological species might not be valid and some others should be subdivided into several species. In the present study، 38 morphological species of the Arvicolini tribe inhabiting in the northern hemisphere were investigated using 823 sequences of cytochrome b gene (1140 base pairs). The research of intra-interspecific genetic distances and haplotype network analysis were carried out for dataset. The Bayesian tree demonstrated 64 haplotype networks in our data. Such results might support the validity of some of the studied morphological species and، on the other hand، might discover unknown species and thus، contribute to the integrative species concept.