Abstract
Paleontological and neontological systematics seek to answer evolutionary questions with different datasets. Phylogenies inferred for combined extant and extinct taxa provide novel insights into the evolutionary history of life. Primates have an extensive, diverse fossil record and molecular data for living and extinct taxa are rapidly becoming available. We used two models to infer the phylogeny and divergence times for living and fossil primates, the tip-dating (TD) and fossilized birth-death process (FBD). We collected new morphological data, especially on the living and extinct endemic lemurs of Madagascar. We combined the morphological data with published DNA sequences to infer near-complete (88% of lemurs) time-calibrated phylogenies. The results suggest that primates originated around the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, slightly earlier than indicated by the fossil record and later than previously inferred from molecular data alone. We infer novel relationships among extinct lemurs, and strong support for relationships that were previously unresolved. Dates inferred with TD were significantly older than those inferred with FBD, most likely related to an assumption of a uniform branching process in the TD compared to a birth-death process assumed in the FBD. This is the first study to combine morphological and DNA sequence data from extinct and extant primates to infer evolutionary relationships and divergence times, and our results shed new light on the tempo of lemur evolution and the efficacy of combined phylogenetic analyses.
Key words: total evidence; primatology; Bayesian phylogenetics; calibration; chronogram
James P. Herrera and Liliana M. Dávalos. 2016. Phylogeny and Divergence Times of Lemurs inferred with Recent and Ancient Fossils in the Tree. Syst Biol. (2016). DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syw035
An exhaustive lemur family tree sheds new light on these threatened primates http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lemur-family-tree_us_57190fc7e4b0d0042da87f80 via @HuffPostScience
