Journal
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 33, Issue 12, Pages 3095-3103Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msw186
Keywords
Ancient DNA; Cenozoic; insectivore; systematics; tropics
Funding
- Royal Society [UF080320/130573, RG100902]
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/D009456/1, NE/J010480/1]
- SYNTHESYS2 (SYNthesis of SYStematic resources) [226506-CP-CSA-Infra]
- British Ecological Society [771/899]
- NERC [NE/D009456/1, NE/J010480/2, NE/J010480/1, NE/J009342/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/J010480/2, NE/J009342/1, NE/J010480/1, NE/D009456/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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The mammalian evolutionary tree has lost several major clades through recent human-caused extinctions. This process of historical biodiversity loss has particularly affected tropical island regions such as the Caribbean, an area of great evolutionary diversification but poor molecular preservation. The most enigmatic of the recently extinct endemic Caribbean mammals are the Nesophontidae, a family of morphologically plesiomorphic lipotyphlan insectivores with no consensus on their evolutionary affinities, and which constitute the only major recent mammal clade to lack any molecular information on their phylogenetic placement. Here, we use a palaeogenomic approach to place Nesophontidae within the phylogeny of recent Lipotyphla. We recovered the near-complete mitochondrial genome and sequences for 17 nuclear genes from a similar to 750-year-old Hispaniolan Nesophontes specimen, and identify a divergence from their closest living relatives, the Solenodontidae, more than 40 million years ago. Nesophontidae is thus an older distinct lineage than many extant mammalian orders, highlighting not only the role of island systems as museums of diversity that preserve ancient lineages, but also the major human-caused loss of evolutionary history.
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