Ancient mitogenomics clarifies radiation of extinct Mascarene giant tortoises (Cylindraspis spp.)
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Authors
Kehlmaier, CGraciá, E
Campbell, P
Hofmeyr, MD
SCHWEIGER, S
Martínez-Silvestre, A
Joyce, W
Fritz, U
Issue date
2019-11-25Submitted date
2019-11-26Subject Terms
HerpetologyPalaeontology
Phylogenetics
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The five extinct giant tortoises of the genus Cylindraspis belong to the most iconic species of the enigmatic fauna of the Mascarene Islands that went largely extinct after the discovery of the islands. To resolve the phylogeny and biogeography of Cylindraspis, we analysed a data set of 45 mitogenomes that includes all lineages of extant tortoises and eight near-complete sequences of all Mascarene species extracted from historic and subfossil material. Cylindraspis is an ancient lineage that diverged as early as the late Eocene. Diversification of Cylindraspis commenced in the mid-Oligocene, long before the formation of the Mascarene Islands. This rejects any notion suggesting that the group either arrived from nearby or distant continents over the course of the last millions of years or had even been translocated to the islands by humans. Instead, Cylindraspis likely originated on now submerged islands of the Réunion Hotspot and utilized these to island hop to reach the Mascarenes. The final diversification took place both before and after the arrival on the Mascarenes. With Cylindraspis a deeply divergent clade of tortoises became extinct that evolved long before the dodo or the Rodrigues solitaire, two other charismatic species of the lost Mascarene fauna.Citation
Kehlmaier, C., Graciá, E., Campbell, P.D. et al. Ancient mitogenomics clarifies radiation of extinct Mascarene giant tortoises (Cylindraspis spp.). Sci Rep 9, 17487 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41598-019-54019-yPublisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLCJournal
Scientific ReportsType
Journal ArticleItem Description
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.NHM Repository
EISSN
2045-2322ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1038/s41598-019-54019-y
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