Conclusions
Overall, this study found four evolutionary lineages of white-footed
mice in North America based on two mitochondrial regions, all of which
diverged during Pleistocene glaciation. The most divergent lineage,
Southwest, was largely limited to grassland and desert habitats whereas
the other three mainly occurred in deciduous forest. Thus, Southwest
could be adapted to such habitats and exhibit genomic change that allows
them to persist outside the typical forested habitats of P.
leucopus . This lineage, therefore, may represent incipient speciation
as observed in other Peromyscus spp , but further clarification is
needed, especially within contact zones to measure patterns in
hybridization. Additionally, we recorded signatures of expansion in all
four lineages, but these signals were particularly evident in the East
and Midwest lineages. These lineages are known reservoirs for tick-borne
illnesses, but current work has focused on regions where only East and
Midwest occur (i.e., northern latitudes). Comparative little is known
about the lineages of Central and Southwest, and their relationship toB. burgdorferi and other potential human pathogens. Collectively,
these results highlight the complex evolutionary histories of
cosmopolitan species like white-footed mice, and the importance of
understanding these dynamics in reservoir species that are actively
expanding.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Sydney Walters was involved in Conceptualization (Supporting),
Data Curation (Lead), Formal Analysis (Supporting), Investigation
(Lead), Methodology (Lead), Validation (Lead), and Writing-original
draft (Supporting). Both Marketa Zimova and Jenifer
Mallinoff contributed through Investigation (Supporting), Methodology
(Supporting), Resources (Supporting), and Writing-review and editing
(Equal). Elizabeth Kierepka participated through Conceptualization
(Lead), Data Curation (Equal), Formal Analysis (Lead), Funding
Acquisition (Lead), Investigation (Equal), Methodology (Equal), Project
Administration (Lead), Supervision (Lead), Validation (Supporting),
Visualization (Lead), Writing – original draft (Equal), and Writing –
review and editing (Equal).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the mammal collections staff of the Museum of
Southwestern Biology, Texas A&M University’s Biodiversity Research and
Teaching Collections, Museum of Texas Tech University, Angelo State
Natural History Collection, and Arizona State University (NEON
Biorepository) for providing tissue samples of Peromyscus
leucopus .
FUNDING INFORMATION
Funding for this project was provided by the James R. and Judy Allen
Pick Award at North Carolina State University and was instrumental in
providing research experience for undergraduate scholars.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
All sequence data will be uploaded to Dryad and Genbank upon acceptance.
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Table 1. Diversity and expansion metrics for the full dataset of
cytochrome b and control region (732 bp cytochrome b, 920 bp control
region; 1652 bp total) for four lineages (Central, East, Midwest, and
Southwest) and the total dataset (Total). Metrics include number of
individuals (n), number of haplotypes (h), haplotype diversity
(hD), nucleotide diversity (π), average pair-wise
nucleotide differences (k), Fu’s Fs (Fs), and Tajima’s D (D). All Fu’s
Fs values except in Central were significant (bold) while no Tajima’s D
tests were significant.