OLD-WORLD FRUITBAT PHYLOGENY - EVIDENCE FOR CONVERGENT EVOLUTION AND AN ENDEMIC AFRICAN CLADE

Knud Andersen (1912, Catalogue of the Chiroptera in the Collections of the British Museum: I, Megachiroptera, British Museum of Natural Hist ory, London) divided Old World fruitbats (family Pteropodidae) into th e rousettine, cynopterine, epomophorine, eonycterine, and notopterine sections, The latter two sections comprise the subfamily Macroglossina e; members of this subfamily exhibit specializations for nectarivory ( e,g,, elongated, protrusible, brushy tongues) and cluster together in cladistic analyses based on anatomical characters, Other evidence, inc luding single-copy DNA hybridization, suggests that macroglossines are either paraphyletic or polyphyletic; this implies that adaptations fo r pollen and nectar feeding evolved independently in different macrogl ossine lineages or were lost in nonmacroglossines after evolving in a more basal common ancestor, Hybridization data also contradict Anderse n's phylogeny in providing support for an endemic African clade that i ncludes representatives of three of Andersen's sections, Here, rye pre sent complete mitochondrial 12S rRNA and valine tRNA gene sequences fo r 20 pteropodids, including representatives of all of Andersen's secti ons, and examine the aforementioned controversies, Maximum likelihood, minimum evolution, and maximum parsimony analyses all contradict macr oglossine monophyly and provide support for an African clade that asso ciates Megaloglossus and Lissonycteris and those two with Epomophorus. In conjunction with the DNA hybridization results, there are now inde pendent lines of molecular evidence suggesting: (i) convergent evoluti on of specializations for nectarivory, at least in Megaloglossus versu s other macroglossines, and (ii) a previously unrecognized clade of en demic Africa taxa, Estimates of divergence time based on 12S rRNA and DNA hybridization data are also in good agreement and suggest that ext ant fruitbats trace back to a common ancestor 25 million to 36 million years ago.