Phylogenetics relationships among four putative taxa of foxes of the Pseudoalopex genus (Canidae, Carnivora)and molecular population genetics of Ps. culpaeus and Ps. sechurae

Herein we analyzed samples of four species of the Neotropical fox genus Pseudoalopex, representing Ps. culpaeus (Ps. culpaeus andina, from Peru and Bolivia, and Ps. culpaeus culpaeus, from Chile), Ps. sechurae (Peru and Ecuador), Ps. griseus(Argentina) and Ps. gymnocercus (Bolivia) for 419 base pairs of the mtCyt-b gene. The main results obtained were as follows: 1- The ancestor of Ps. sechurae was the first to diverge for the taxa of Pseudoalopex studied around 1.1-1.2 MYA. Ps. sechurae was thespecies which presented the highest levels of gene diversity of the Pseudoalopex species,probably because it is the oldest one of those studied; 2- The temporal separation of Ps.griseus and Ps. culpaeus is very recent (0.15-0.21 MYA) and no monophyly reciprocity was found in any of the analyses undertaken; 3- The divergence split between Ps.culpaeus culpaeus and Ps. culpaeus andina was around 0.17-0.22 MYA and these two culpaeus forms could be seen as two different ESUs in terms of biological conservation;4- The individual of Ps. gymnocercus analyzed did not differentiate from the haplotypesof culpaeus. Two hypotheses were speculated: the taxa gymnocercus is not molecularlydifferentiated from culpaeus because a very extreme and recent speciation or it is anexample of hybridization among two Neotropical fox species, with gene introgression of Ps. culpaeus within Ps. gymnocercus; 5- No geographical structure was found within Ps.culpaeus andina. This means that the populations of this species in Peru and Bolivia mustbe conserved as unique ESUs; 6- There was evidence of population expansion in Ps.culpaeus and Ps. sechurae, although the demographic evolution of both Neotropicalfoxes was different.