A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent publications concerning the interordinal phylogeny of placental mammals have converged on a common signal, consisting of four major radiations with some ambiguity regarding the placental root. The DNA data with which these rel...

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Main Author: Asher Robert J
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2007-07-01
Series:BMC Evolutionary Biology
Online Access:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/7/108
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spelling doaj-1be329dd3e9e46278cea78c32e614a782021-09-02T15:11:36ZengBMCBMC Evolutionary Biology1471-21482007-07-017110810.1186/1471-2148-7-108A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogenyAsher Robert J<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent publications concerning the interordinal phylogeny of placental mammals have converged on a common signal, consisting of four major radiations with some ambiguity regarding the placental root. The DNA data with which these relationships have been reconstructed are easily accessible from public databases; access to morphological characters is much more difficult. Here, I present a graphical web-database of morphological characters focusing on placental mammals, in tandem with a combined-data phylogenetic analysis of placental mammal phylogeny.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results reinforce the growing consensus regarding the extant placental mammal clades of Afrotheria, Xenarthra, Euarchontoglires, and Laurasiatheria. Unweighted parsimony applied to all DNA sequences and insertion-deletion (indel) characters of extant taxa alone support a placental root at murid rodents; combined with morphology this shifts to Afrotheria. Bayesian analyses of morphology, indels, and DNA support both a basal position for Afrotheria and the position of Cretaceous eutherians outside of crown Placentalia. Depending on treatment of third codon positions, the affinity of several fossils (<it>Leptictis</it>,<it>Paleoparadoxia</it>, <it>Plesiorycteropus </it>and <it>Zalambdalestes</it>) vary, highlighting the potential effect of sequence data on fossils for which such data are missing.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The combined dataset supports the location of the placental mammal root at Afrotheria or Xenarthra, not at <it>Erinaceus </it>or rodents. Even a small morphological dataset can have a marked influence on the location of the root in a combined-data analysis. Additional morphological data are desirable to better reconstruct the position of several fossil taxa; and the graphic-rich, web-based morphology data matrix presented here will make it easier to incorporate more taxa into a larger data matrix.</p> http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/7/108
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Asher Robert J
spellingShingle Asher Robert J
A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny
BMC Evolutionary Biology
author_facet Asher Robert J
author_sort Asher Robert J
title A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny
title_short A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny
title_full A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny
title_fullStr A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny
title_full_unstemmed A web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny
title_sort web-database of mammalian morphology and a reanalysis of placental phylogeny
publisher BMC
series BMC Evolutionary Biology
issn 1471-2148
publishDate 2007-07-01
description <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent publications concerning the interordinal phylogeny of placental mammals have converged on a common signal, consisting of four major radiations with some ambiguity regarding the placental root. The DNA data with which these relationships have been reconstructed are easily accessible from public databases; access to morphological characters is much more difficult. Here, I present a graphical web-database of morphological characters focusing on placental mammals, in tandem with a combined-data phylogenetic analysis of placental mammal phylogeny.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results reinforce the growing consensus regarding the extant placental mammal clades of Afrotheria, Xenarthra, Euarchontoglires, and Laurasiatheria. Unweighted parsimony applied to all DNA sequences and insertion-deletion (indel) characters of extant taxa alone support a placental root at murid rodents; combined with morphology this shifts to Afrotheria. Bayesian analyses of morphology, indels, and DNA support both a basal position for Afrotheria and the position of Cretaceous eutherians outside of crown Placentalia. Depending on treatment of third codon positions, the affinity of several fossils (<it>Leptictis</it>,<it>Paleoparadoxia</it>, <it>Plesiorycteropus </it>and <it>Zalambdalestes</it>) vary, highlighting the potential effect of sequence data on fossils for which such data are missing.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The combined dataset supports the location of the placental mammal root at Afrotheria or Xenarthra, not at <it>Erinaceus </it>or rodents. Even a small morphological dataset can have a marked influence on the location of the root in a combined-data analysis. Additional morphological data are desirable to better reconstruct the position of several fossil taxa; and the graphic-rich, web-based morphology data matrix presented here will make it easier to incorporate more taxa into a larger data matrix.</p>
url http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/7/108
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