IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0176773.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mosasauroid phylogeny under multiple phylogenetic methods provides new insights on the evolution of aquatic adaptations in the group

Author

Listed:
  • Tiago R Simões
  • Oksana Vernygora
  • Ilaria Paparella
  • Paulina Jimenez-Huidobro
  • Michael W Caldwell

Abstract

Mosasauroids were a successful lineage of squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) that radiated during the Late Cretaceous (95–66 million years ago). They can be considered one of the few lineages in the evolutionary history of tetrapods to have acquired a fully aquatic lifestyle, similarly to whales, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Despite a long history of research on this group, their phylogenetic relationships have only been tested so far using traditional (unweighted) maximum parsimony. However, hypotheses of mosasauroid relationships and the recently proposed multiple origins of aquatically adapted pelvic and pedal features in this group can be more thoroughly tested by methods that take into account variation in branch lengths and evolutionary rates. In this study, we present the first mosasauroid phylogenetic analysis performed under different analytical methods, including maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, and implied weighting maximum parsimony. The results indicate a lack of congruence in the topological position of halisaurines and Dallasaurus. Additionally, the genus Prognathodon is paraphyletic under all hypotheses. Interestingly, a number of traditional mosasauroid clades become weakly supported, or unresolved, under Bayesian analyses. The reduced resolutions in some consensus trees create ambiguities concerning the evolution of fully aquatic pelvic/pedal conditions under many analyses. However, when enough resolution was obtained, reversals of the pelvic/pedal conditions were favoured by parsimony and likelihood ancestral state reconstructions instead of independent origins of aquatic features in mosasauroids. It is concluded that most of the observed discrepancies among the results can be associated with different analytical procedures, but also due to limited postcranial data on halisaurines, yaguarasaurines and Dallasaurus.

Suggested Citation

  • Tiago R Simões & Oksana Vernygora & Ilaria Paparella & Paulina Jimenez-Huidobro & Michael W Caldwell, 2017. "Mosasauroid phylogeny under multiple phylogenetic methods provides new insights on the evolution of aquatic adaptations in the group," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(5), pages 1-20, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0176773
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176773
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176773
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176773&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0176773?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tod W Reeder & Ted M Townsend & Daniel G Mulcahy & Brice P Noonan & Perry L Wood Jr. & Jack W Sites Jr. & John J Wiens, 2015. "Integrated Analyses Resolve Conflicts over Squamate Reptile Phylogeny and Reveal Unexpected Placements for Fossil Taxa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-22, March.
    2. April M Wright & David M Hillis, 2014. "Bayesian Analysis Using a Simple Likelihood Model Outperforms Parsimony for Estimation of Phylogeny from Discrete Morphological Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-6, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Neil Brocklehurst & Robert R Reisz & Vincent Fernandez & Jörg Fröbisch, 2016. "A Re-Description of ‘Mycterosaurus’ smithae, an Early Permian Eothyridid, and Its Impact on the Phylogeny of Pelycosaurian-Grade Synapsids," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-27, June.
    2. Chase D. Brownstein & Dalton L. Meyer & Matteo Fabbri & Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar & Jacques A. Gauthier, 2022. "Evolutionary origins of the prolonged extant squamate radiation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Spade David A., 2020. "An extended model for phylogenetic maximum likelihood based on discrete morphological characters," Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 1-11, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0176773. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.