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Mitochondrial phylogeography of the black rat supports a single invasion of the western Mediterranean basin

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Abstract

The black rat Rattus rattus is recognized as one of the world’s most harmful invasive species. It has spread across the globe by passive human transport and the dynamics of colonization have been investigated in several areas of the world. However, data for the Mediterranean basin are still lacking. We investigated the black rat colonization of the western Mediterranean basin by means of mitochondrial genes. Mitochondrial control region and cytochrome b gene were sequenced in order to quantify genetic diversity of western Mediterranean black rats. Maximum likelihood phylogenetic analysis based on cytochrome b was used to assign specimens to a specific lineage of the R. rattus species complex. The mitochondrial control region was used to reconstruct phylogeographic pattern by statistical parsimony network and to asses historical demography of western Mediterranean black rats. The results show an unexpectedly low diversity considering that the Mediterranean basin has been a trade route since very ancient times. The results mtDNA analysis are compatible with a single event of invasions of western Mediterranean by R. rattus.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Giuliano Milana and Mauro Cristaldi who provide us some tissues of rats from central Italy. We are also grateful to Michel Pascal who kindly provided us tissues from Port Cros Island. This work has been partly supported by funds “SAPIENZA Università di Roma, Domanda di finanziamento per Progetti di Ricerca di Università” to R.C.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Council, Institute of Ecosystem Study, Largo Tonolli 50, 28922, Verbania Pallanza, Italy

    P. Colangelo & G. Amori

  2. Eco-conservation Society, 6 Rue 6010 Omrane Superieur, 1091, Tunis, Tunisia

    A. Abiadh

  3. Museo di Storia Naturale della Calabria e Orto Botanico, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy

    G. Aloise

  4. Agenzia Regionale Parchi regione Lazio, via del Pescaccio 96, 00166, Rome, Italy

    D. Capizzi

  5. Department of Biology and Biotechnology “Charles Darwin”, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Via Borelli 50, 00161, Rome, Italy

    P. Colangelo, E. Vasa, F. Annesi & R. Castiglia

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  1. P. Colangelo
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Correspondence to P. Colangelo.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Online Resource 1: Identification number and origin of each specimens. Supplementary material 1 (PDF 61 kb)

10530_2015_842_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx

Online Resource 2: List of R. rattus d-loop and cytochrome b sequences downloaded from GeneBank with accession numbers. Supplementary material 2 (XSLX 26 kb)

10530_2015_842_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 3: Maximum likelihood tree based of cytochrome b gene. Mediterranean haplotypes are highlighted in red. Four R. rattus lineages are recognized according to Aplin et al. (2011). Numbers represent bootstrap support (1,000 replicates; only values >50 % were reported). Supplementary material 3 (PDF 220 kb)

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Colangelo, P., Abiadh, A., Aloise, G. et al. Mitochondrial phylogeography of the black rat supports a single invasion of the western Mediterranean basin. Biol Invasions 17, 1859–1868 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-015-0842-2

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