Phylogeography of Rattus norvegicus in the South Atlantic Ocean

Melanie Hingston; Sally Poncet; Ken Passfield; Michael A. Tabak; Sofia I. Gabriel; Stuart B. Piertney; James C. Russell

doi:10.3390/d8040032

Phylogeography of Rattus norvegicus in the South Atlantic Ocean

Melanie Hingston^*, Sally Poncet, Ken Passfield, Michael A. Tabak, Sofia I. Gabriel, Stuart B. Piertney, James C. Russell

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

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Abstract

Norway rats are a globally distributed invasive species, which have colonized many islands around the world, including in the South Atlantic Ocean. We investigated the phylogeography of Norway rats across the South Atlantic Ocean and bordering continental countries. We identified haplotypes from 517 bp of the hypervariable region I of the mitochondrial D-loop and constructed a Bayesian consensus tree and median-joining network incorporating all other publicly available haplotypes via an alignment of 364 bp. Three Norway rat haplotypes are present across the islands of the South Atlantic Ocean, including multiple haplotypes separated by geographic barriers within island groups. All three haplotypes have been previously recorded from European countries. Our results support the hypothesis of rapid Norway rat colonization of South Atlantic Ocean islands by sea-faring European nations from multiple European ports of origin. This seems to have been the predominant pathway for repeated Norway rat invasions of islands, even within the same archipelago, rather than within-island dispersal across geographic barriers.

Original language	English
Article number	32
Journal	Differentiation: Research in Biological Diversity
Volume	8
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3390/d8040032
Publication status	Published - 20 Dec 2016

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments
Funding for sample collection was provided by the Shackleton Scholarship Fund, Antarctic Research Trust, the Wyoming Biodiversity Institute, PVE/CAPES (Proposal 235453) and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BPD/88854/2012). Thanks to Martin Collins, Andy Black, Darren Christie and the Government of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands for the provision of samples from South Georgia, Annalea Beard for providing the rat sample from St Helena Island, Joaquim Tapisso, Rita Monarca and Ana Cerveira for samples from Portugal, and Emily Puckett for help validating South American SNP haplotypes. Funding for DNA sequencing was provided by Island LandCare, the University of Auckland. Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for the constructive comments.

Keywords

Commensals
Invasive species
Island phylogeography
Mitochondrial DNA
Pest management
Rattus norvegicus
South Atlantic

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10.3390/d8040032Licence: CC BY

Phylogeography of Rattus norvegicus in the South Atlantic Ocean
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Final published version, 894 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Norway rats are a globally distributed invasive species, which have colonized many islands around the world, including in the South Atlantic Ocean. We investigated the phylogeography of Norway rats across the South Atlantic Ocean and bordering continental countries. We identified haplotypes from 517 bp of the hypervariable region I of the mitochondrial D-loop and constructed a Bayesian consensus tree and median-joining network incorporating all other publicly available haplotypes via an alignment of 364 bp. Three Norway rat haplotypes are present across the islands of the South Atlantic Ocean, including multiple haplotypes separated by geographic barriers within island groups. All three haplotypes have been previously recorded from European countries. Our results support the hypothesis of rapid Norway rat colonization of South Atlantic Ocean islands by sea-faring European nations from multiple European ports of origin. This seems to have been the predominant pathway for repeated Norway rat invasions of islands, even within the same archipelago, rather than within-island dispersal across geographic barriers.",

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N2 - Norway rats are a globally distributed invasive species, which have colonized many islands around the world, including in the South Atlantic Ocean. We investigated the phylogeography of Norway rats across the South Atlantic Ocean and bordering continental countries. We identified haplotypes from 517 bp of the hypervariable region I of the mitochondrial D-loop and constructed a Bayesian consensus tree and median-joining network incorporating all other publicly available haplotypes via an alignment of 364 bp. Three Norway rat haplotypes are present across the islands of the South Atlantic Ocean, including multiple haplotypes separated by geographic barriers within island groups. All three haplotypes have been previously recorded from European countries. Our results support the hypothesis of rapid Norway rat colonization of South Atlantic Ocean islands by sea-faring European nations from multiple European ports of origin. This seems to have been the predominant pathway for repeated Norway rat invasions of islands, even within the same archipelago, rather than within-island dispersal across geographic barriers.

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Phylogeography of Rattus norvegicus in the South Atlantic Ocean

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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