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The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters

The geoemydid turtles of the Eocoene Messel Pit Quarry of Hesse, Germany, are part of a rich Western European fossil record of testudinoids. Originally referred to as “Ocadia” kehreri and “Ocadia” messeliana, their systematic relationships remain unclear. A previous study proposed that a majority of...

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Autores principales: Ascarrunz, Eduardo, Claude, Julien, Joyce, Walter G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8349520/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34430073
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11805
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author Ascarrunz, Eduardo
Claude, Julien
Joyce, Walter G.
author_facet Ascarrunz, Eduardo
Claude, Julien
Joyce, Walter G.
author_sort Ascarrunz, Eduardo
collection PubMed
description The geoemydid turtles of the Eocoene Messel Pit Quarry of Hesse, Germany, are part of a rich Western European fossil record of testudinoids. Originally referred to as “Ocadia” kehreri and “Ocadia” messeliana, their systematic relationships remain unclear. A previous study proposed that a majority of the Western European geoemydids, including the Messel geoemydids, are closely related to the Recent European representatives of the clade Mauremys. Another study hypothesised that the Western European geoemydid fauna is more phylogenetically diverse, and that the Messel geoemydids are closely related to the East Asian turtles Orlitia and Malayemys. Here we present the first quantitative analyses to date that investigate this question. We use continuous characters in the form of ratios to estimate the placement of the Messel geoemydids in a reference tree that was estimated from molecular data. We explore the placement error obtained from that data with maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods, as well as linear parsimony in combination with discrete characters. We find good overall performance with Bayesian and parsimony analyses. Parsimony performs even better when we also incorporated discrete characters. Yet, we cannot pin down the position of the Messel geoemydids with high confidence. Depending on how intraspecific variation of the ratio characters is treated, parsimony favours a placement of the Messel fossils sister to Orlitia borneensis or sister to Geoemyda spengleri, with weak bootstrap support. The latter placement is suspect because G. spengleri is a phylogenetically problematic species with molecular and morphological data. There is even less support for placements within the Mauremys clade.
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spelling pubmed-83495202021-08-23 The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters Ascarrunz, Eduardo Claude, Julien Joyce, Walter G. PeerJ Evolutionary Studies The geoemydid turtles of the Eocoene Messel Pit Quarry of Hesse, Germany, are part of a rich Western European fossil record of testudinoids. Originally referred to as “Ocadia” kehreri and “Ocadia” messeliana, their systematic relationships remain unclear. A previous study proposed that a majority of the Western European geoemydids, including the Messel geoemydids, are closely related to the Recent European representatives of the clade Mauremys. Another study hypothesised that the Western European geoemydid fauna is more phylogenetically diverse, and that the Messel geoemydids are closely related to the East Asian turtles Orlitia and Malayemys. Here we present the first quantitative analyses to date that investigate this question. We use continuous characters in the form of ratios to estimate the placement of the Messel geoemydids in a reference tree that was estimated from molecular data. We explore the placement error obtained from that data with maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods, as well as linear parsimony in combination with discrete characters. We find good overall performance with Bayesian and parsimony analyses. Parsimony performs even better when we also incorporated discrete characters. Yet, we cannot pin down the position of the Messel geoemydids with high confidence. Depending on how intraspecific variation of the ratio characters is treated, parsimony favours a placement of the Messel fossils sister to Orlitia borneensis or sister to Geoemyda spengleri, with weak bootstrap support. The latter placement is suspect because G. spengleri is a phylogenetically problematic species with molecular and morphological data. There is even less support for placements within the Mauremys clade. PeerJ Inc. 2021-08-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8349520/ /pubmed/34430073 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11805 Text en © 2021 Ascarrunz et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Evolutionary Studies
Ascarrunz, Eduardo
Claude, Julien
Joyce, Walter G.
The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters
title The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters
title_full The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters
title_fullStr The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters
title_full_unstemmed The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters
title_short The phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the Eocene Messel Pit Quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters
title_sort phylogenetic relationships of geoemydid turtles from the eocene messel pit quarry: a first assessment using methods for continuous and discrete characters
topic Evolutionary Studies
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8349520/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34430073
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11805
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