Ancient mitogenomics clarifies radiation of extinct Mascarene giant tortoises (Cylindraspis spp.).
- Kehlmaier C Museum of Zoology, Senckenberg Dresden, A. B. Meyer Building, 01109, Dresden, Germany.
- Graciá E Ecology Area, Department of Applied Biology, Miguel Hernández University, Av. de la Universidad, Torreblanca, 03202, Elche, Spain.
- Campbell PD Department of Life Sciences, Darwin Centre (DC1), Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD, England, UK.
- Hofmeyr MD Chelonian Biodiversity and Conservation, Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, 7535, South Africa.
- Schweiger S Herpetological Collection, Natural History Museum Vienna, Burgring 7, 1010, Vienna, Austria.
- Martínez-Silvestre A Catalonian Reptile and Amphibian Rescue Center (CRARC), 08783, Masquefa, Barcelona, Spain.
- Joyce W Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland.
- Fritz U Museum of Zoology, Senckenberg Dresden, A. B. Meyer Building, 01109, Dresden, Germany. uwe.fritz@senckenberg.de.
- 2019-11-27
Published in:
- Scientific reports. - 2019
Animals
DNA, Mitochondrial
Fossils
Indian Ocean
Mauritius
Mitochondria
Phylogeny
Phylogeography
Reunion
Sequence Analysis, DNA
Turtles
English
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.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- gold
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1038/s41598-019-54019-y
- PMID 31767921
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/135966
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