A global analysis of bats using automated comparative phylogeography uncovers a surprising impact of Pleistocene glaciation

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Aim: Our work seeks to understand the global demographical response of bat species to the climate change that occurred at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Location: All continents except Antarctica. Methods: Mitochondrial DNA sequences were sampled from bat species throughout the planet where we could associate a georeferenced sample with a given DNA sequence. Our investigation estimates the historical demographical response using over 12,000 samples from >300 nominal species of bats. Custom PYTHON and R scripts were written to aggregate sequence data from GenBank, locality information from GBIF, and to associate these records to individual samples. We conducted approximate Bayesian computation to calculate the posterior probability of demographical bottleneck and expansion responses to the end of the Pleistocene, and then collected organismal trait data to identify traits that were associated with either demographical response. We also used R to estimate current and end-Pleistocene species distribution models (SDM) for species where >10 georeferenced samples were available.