Dissertation Research: Phylogeny of 'Tenrecoid' Insectivorans (Lipotyphla: Mammalia)

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9800908 Ross Insectivores, collectively, are among the oldest and most diverse groups of mammals. Living mammals in the insectivore family Tenrecidae, which are found in Madagascar and eastern Africa,is a particularly diverse group. The historical (phylogenetic) relationships of this group to other insectivores are not well known. Moreover, it is not clear whether fossil and recent tenrec-like mammals found in continental North America, the Caribbean, and Asia belong to the Tenrecidae, and if so it is not clear what factors were involved in determining past and present distributions of these animals. A well-sampled phylogeny of tenrecids and other recent and extinct insectivorans promises to shed light not only on questions of the taxonomic and biogeography of the Tenrecidae, but also on larger issues of mammalian phylogeny, including the historical relationships among insectivorous mammals and the origin and diversification of endemic African mammals. In this doctoral dissertation research, Callum Ross, Ross D. MacPhee and student Robert J. Asher will collect morphological data on osteology of living and extinct insectivorans, as well as previously unknown aspects of soft-tissue morphology among Tenricidae and related mammals. These data will be analyzed in tandem with molecular sequence data using parsimony-based computer programs. Explicit assumption sets for phylogenetic analysis will be created that vary the use of character weighting, ordering, the choice of outgroups, and the treatment of characters with missing data. Conclusions regarding tenrecid phylogeny will be based partly on consistencies across trees generated by these assumption sets.