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Ancient phylogenetic divergence of the enigmatic African rodent Zenkerella and the origin of anomalurid gliding
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Ancient phylogenetic divergence of the enigmatic African rodent Zenkerella and the origin of anomalurid gliding

Steven Heritage, David Fernandez, Hesham M. Sallam, Drew T. Cronin, Jose Manuel Esara Echube and Erik R. Seiffert
PeerJ (San Francisco, CA), v 2320(8), pp e2320-e2320
16 Aug 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2320
PMID: 27602286
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
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https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2320View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Abstract

adaptation Africa Anomaluridae Anomalurus Bioko Island biologic evolution Cenozoic Central Africa Chordata DNA Equatorial Guinea Eutheria genetics Idiurus living fossils living taxa Mammalia molecular clocks morphology nucleic acids phylogeny Rodentia Tetrapoda Theria Vertebrata Vertebrate paleontology Zenkerella insignis
The "scaly-tailed squirrels" of the rodent family Anomaluridae have a long evolutionary history in Africa, and are now represented by two gliding genera (Anomalurus and Idiurus) and a rare and obscure genus (Zenkerella) that has never been observed alive by mammalogists. Zenkerella shows no anatomical adaptations for gliding, but has traditionally been grouped with the glider Idiurus on the basis of craniodental similarities, implying that either the Zenkerella lineage lost its gliding adaptations, or that Anomalurus and Idiurus evolved theirs independently. Here we present the first nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences of Zenkerella, based on recently recovered whole-body specimens from Bioko Island (Equatorial Guinea), which show unambiguously that Zenkerella is the sister taxon of Anomalurus and Idiurus. These data indicate that gliding likely evolved only once within Anomaluridae, and that there were no subsequent evolutionary reversals. We combine this new molecular evidence with morphological data from living and extinct anomaluromorph rodents and estimate that the lineage leading to Zenkerella has been evolving independently in Africa since the early Eocene, approximately 49 million years ago. Recently discovered fossils further attest to the antiquity of the lineage leading to Zenkerella, which can now be recognized as a classic example of a "living fossil," about which we know remarkably little. The osteological markers of gliding are estimated to have evolved along the stem lineage of the Anomalurus-Idiurus clade by the early Oligocene, potentially indicating that this adaptation evolved in response to climatic perturbations at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary ( approximately 34 million years ago).

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Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Evolutionary Biology
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