Phylogenetic analysis of Leopoldamys Sabanus (Rodentia: Muridae) from Malaysia

species. The Long Tailed Giant Rat, L. sabanus is widely distributed through Southeast Asia and make this species were unclear with the taxonomic status given to them. Other than that, based on previous study also showed that rodent exhibit high rate of molecular evolution and speciation event. This study were conducted to examine genetic diversity and phylogeographic pattern on L. sabanus. Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COl) gene from the mitochondrial DNA was used to infer the phylogenetic structure. 25 samples were collected from Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah through fresh sampling and museum sample. Phylogenetc tree from the total 31 individual and 9 species constructed using Maximum Likelihood (ML), Neighbour Joining (NJ) and Maximum Parsimony (MP) analysis and genetic distance also were calculated. The highlight from this study show that L. sabanus were separated according their geographical area even though they were clustered together with genetic distance difference among population more than 5 percent and may indicate that both population of Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo representing a different species. Thus conclude that mtDNA were able to resolve moderate level of intraspecific variation species of L. sabanus between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. Further morphological studies needed to be done to clarify this species