Preliminary Data on Phylogeography of the Naked Mole-Rat Heterocephalus glaber (Rodentia: Heterocephalidae)

The naked mole-rat Heterocephalus glaber is widespread in arid and semiarid areas of northeast Africa. It is endemic to the Somali-Masai biome and has a number of unique characteristics of its biology. Obviously, this could affect the structure of the genetic diversity of the species, which is insufficiently studied. For the first time, we conducted a comparative analysis of two complete mitochondrial genes (cytochrome b and control region) of the species from a significant part of its range. Our results showed that H. glaber has a strong phylogeographic structure. There are probably several deeply divergent lineages of H. glaber, whose taxonomic status is not resolved.