RESUMO
Among mammalian phylogenies, those characterized by rapid radiations are particularly problematic. The New World monkeys (NWMs, Platyrrhini) comprise 3 families and 7 subfamilies, which radiated within a relatively short time period. Accordingly, their phylogenetic relationships are still largely disputed. In the present study, 56 nuclear non-coding loci, including 33 introns (INs) and 23 intergenic regions (IGs), from 20 NWM individuals representing 18 species were used to investigate phylogenetic relationships among families and subfamilies. Of the 56 loci, 43 have not been used in previous NWM phylogenetics. We applied concatenation and coalescence tree-inference methods, and a recently proposed question-specific approach to address NWM phylogeny. Our results indicate incongruence between concatenation and coalescence methods for the IN and IG datasets. However, a consensus was reached with a single tree topology from all analyses of combined INs and IGs as well as all analyses of question-specific loci using both concatenation and coalescence methods, albeit with varying degrees of statistical support. In detail, our results indicated the sister-group relationships between the families Atelidae and Pitheciidae, and between the subfamilies Aotinae and Callithrichinae among Cebidae. Our study provides insights into the disputed phylogenetic relationships among NWM families and subfamilies from the perspective of multiple non-coding loci and various tree-inference approaches. However, the present phylogenetic framework needs further evaluation by adding more independent sequence data and a deeper taxonomic sampling. Overall, our work has important implications for phylogenetic studies dealing with rapid radiations.
RESUMO
As the second biggest animal group in mammals, Chiroptera (bats) demonstrates many unique adaptive features in terms of flight, echolocation, auditory acuity, feeding habit, hibernation and immune defense, providing an excellent system for understanding the molecular basis of how organisms adapt to the living environments encountered. In this review, we summarize the researches on the molecular mechanism of the adaptive evolution of Chiroptera, especially the recent researches at the genome levels, suggesting a far more complex evolutionary pattern and functional diversity than previously thought. In the future, along with the increasing numbers of Chiroptera species genomes available, new evolutionary patterns and functional divergence will be revealed, which can promote the further understanding of this animal group and the molecular mechanism of adaptive evolution.
