TY - JOUR
T1 - Ultraconserved elements-based phylogenomic systematics of the snake superfamily Elapoidea, with the description of a new Afro-Asian family
AU - Das, Sunandan
AU - Greenbaum, Eli
AU - Meiri, Shai
AU - Bauer, Aaron M.
AU - Burbrink, Frank T.
AU - Raxworthy, Christopher J.
AU - Weinell, Jeffrey L.
AU - Brown, Rafe M.
AU - Brecko, Jonathan
AU - Pauwels, Olivier S.G.
AU - Rabibisoa, Nirhy
AU - Raselimanana, Achille P.
AU - Merilä, Juha
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - The highly diverse snake superfamily Elapoidea is considered to be a classic example of ancient, rapid radiation. Such radiations are challenging to fully resolve phylogenetically, with the highly diverse Elapoidea a case in point. Previous attempts at inferring a phylogeny of elapoids produced highly incongruent estimates of their evolutionary relationships, often with very low statistical support. We sought to resolve this situation by sequencing over 4,500 ultraconserved element loci from multiple representatives of every elapoid family/subfamily level taxon and inferring their phylogenetic relationships with multiple methods. Concatenation and multispecies coalescent based species trees yielded largely congruent and well-supported topologies. Hypotheses of a hard polytomy were not retained for any deep branches. Our phylogenies recovered Cyclocoridae and Elapidae as diverging early within Elapoidea. The Afro-Malagasy radiation of elapoid snakes, classified as multiple subfamilies of an inclusive Lamprophiidae by some earlier authors, was found to be monophyletic in all analyses. The genus Micrelaps was consistently recovered as sister to Lamprophiidae. We establish a new family, Micrelapidae fam. nov., for Micrelaps and assign Brachyophis to this family based on cranial osteological synapomorphy. We estimate that Elapoidea originated in the early Eocene and rapidly diversified into all the major lineages during this epoch. Ecological opportunities presented by the post-Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event may have promoted the explosive radiation of elapoid snakes.
AB - The highly diverse snake superfamily Elapoidea is considered to be a classic example of ancient, rapid radiation. Such radiations are challenging to fully resolve phylogenetically, with the highly diverse Elapoidea a case in point. Previous attempts at inferring a phylogeny of elapoids produced highly incongruent estimates of their evolutionary relationships, often with very low statistical support. We sought to resolve this situation by sequencing over 4,500 ultraconserved element loci from multiple representatives of every elapoid family/subfamily level taxon and inferring their phylogenetic relationships with multiple methods. Concatenation and multispecies coalescent based species trees yielded largely congruent and well-supported topologies. Hypotheses of a hard polytomy were not retained for any deep branches. Our phylogenies recovered Cyclocoridae and Elapidae as diverging early within Elapoidea. The Afro-Malagasy radiation of elapoid snakes, classified as multiple subfamilies of an inclusive Lamprophiidae by some earlier authors, was found to be monophyletic in all analyses. The genus Micrelaps was consistently recovered as sister to Lamprophiidae. We establish a new family, Micrelapidae fam. nov., for Micrelaps and assign Brachyophis to this family based on cranial osteological synapomorphy. We estimate that Elapoidea originated in the early Eocene and rapidly diversified into all the major lineages during this epoch. Ecological opportunities presented by the post-Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event may have promoted the explosive radiation of elapoid snakes.
KW - Elapoidea
KW - Micrelapidae fam. nov.
KW - Phylogeny
KW - UCE
KW - Ultraconserved elements
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85145984173&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ympev.2022.107700
DO - 10.1016/j.ympev.2022.107700
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C2 - 36603697
AN - SCOPUS:85145984173
SN - 1055-7903
VL - 180
JO - Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution
JF - Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution
M1 - 107700
ER -