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Toward consilience in reptile phylogeny: miRNAs support an archosaur, not lepidosaur, affinity for turtles
Author(s) -
Field Daniel J.,
Gauthier Jacques A.,
King Benjamin L.,
Pisani Davide,
Lyson Tyler R.,
Peterson Kevin J.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
evolution and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.651
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1525-142X
pISSN - 1520-541X
DOI - 10.1111/ede.12081
Subject(s) - biology , phylogenetic tree , phylogenetics , sister group , consilience , turtle (robot) , evolutionary biology , most recent common ancestor , painted turtle , zoology , gene , clade , genetics , ecology , physics , quantum mechanics
SUMMARY Understanding the phylogenetic position of crown turtles (Testudines) among amniotes has been a source of particular contention. Recent morphological analyses suggest that turtles are sister to all other reptiles, whereas the vast majority of gene sequence analyses support turtles as being inside Diapsida, and usually as sister to crown Archosauria (birds and crocodilians). Previously, a study using microRNAs (miRNAs) placed turtles inside diapsids, but as sister to lepidosaurs (lizards and Sphenodon ) rather than archosaurs. Here, we test this hypothesis with an expanded miRNA presence/absence dataset, and employ more rigorous criteria for miRNA annotation. Significantly, we find no support for a turtle + lepidosaur sister‐relationship; instead, we recover strong support for turtles sharing a more recent common ancestor with archosaurs. We further test this result by analyzing a super‐alignment of precursor miRNA sequences for every miRNA inferred to have been present in the most recent common ancestor of tetrapods. This analysis yields a topology that is fully congruent with our presence/absence analysis; our results are therefore in accordance with most gene sequence studies, providing strong, consilient molecular evidence from diverse independent datasets regarding the phylogenetic position of turtles.