Phylogeography of the large Myotis bats ( C hiroptera: V espertilionidae) in E urope, A sia M inor, and T ranscaucasia

The large Myotis complex in continental E urope, A sia M inor, and T ranscaucasia comprises two sibling bat species, the greater mouse‐eared bat, Myotis myotis , and the lesser mouse‐eared bat, Myotis blythii , also referred to as Myotis oxygnathus . Here, we investigate the phylogeography of these bats using two mitochondrial markers: the second hypervariable domain of the control region ( HVII ) and a fragment of the cytochrome  b gene (cyt   b ). The HVII haplotypes formed six distinct haplogroups associated with different geographical regions. Most of the E uropean HVII haplotypes were exclusive to M. myotis , whereas the majority of HVII haplotypes found in A sia M inor were exclusive to M. blythii / M. oxygnathus . The phylogenetic reconstruction based on the concatenated cyt  b and HVII fragments recovered two major lineages. The first lineage comprised samples from E urope (western lineage), and the second lineage included samples from A sia M inor, T ranscaucasia, C rimea, W estern U kraine, T hrace, the B alkans, and E astern E urope (eastern lineage). The mitochondrial lineage of M. blythii , reported from K yrgyzstan, was not present in A sia M inor and T ranscaucasia. Therefore, we consider the possibility that the M. blythii/M. oxygnathus found in E urope, A sia M inor, and T ranscaucasia are not recent descendants of the C entral A sian M. blythii . Instead, we suggest that M. blythii/M. oxygnathus and M. myotis diverged through allopatric speciation in A sia M inor and E urope, and that they are represented by the eastern and western mitochondrial lineages. We also examine an alternative hypothesis: that the large Myotis complex consists of more than two species that diverged independently in A sia M inor and E urope through ecological speciation. © 2012 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 2012, ••, ••–••.