Molecular and morphological evidence on the phylogeny of the Elephantidae

Thomas, Mark G.; Hagelberg, Erika; Jones, Humphrey Owen; Yang, Ziheng; Lister, Adrian M.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2000.1310

Cited by 45 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Mitochondrial loci such as the D-loop, cytochrome b (cyt b), 12S rDNA, and 16S rDNA have been used in phylogenetic studies, forensic application, and species identification of animals [4][5][6][7][8]. These loci along with autosomal microsatellite loci were also used in the related study of elephants [9][10][11][12]. A total of 16 autosomal microsatellite loci have been characterised to determine the geographic origin of African elephants [13,14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ivory identification by DNA profiling of cytochrome b gene

Lee

Hsieh²,

Huang³

et al. 2008

Int J Legal Med

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Ivory can be visually identified in its native form as coming from an elephant species; however, determining from which of the three extant elephant species a section of ivory originates is more problematic. We report on a method that will identify and distinguish the protected and endangered elephant species, Elephas maximus or Loxodonta sp. To identify the species of elephant from ivory products, we developed three groups of nested PCR amplifications within the cytochrome b gene that generate amplification products using highly degraded DNA isolated from confiscated ivory samples dating from 1995. DNA from a total of 382 out of 453 ivory samples were successfully isolated and amplified leading to species identification. All sequences were searched against GenBank and found to match with E. maximus and Loxodonta sp. with at least 99% similarity. The samples that were tested came from eight Asian elephants, 14 African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), and 360 African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana). This study demonstrates a high success rate in species identification of ivory by a nested PCR approach within the cytochrome b gene which provides the necessary information for the protection of endangered species conservation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ivory identification by DNA profiling of cytochrome b gene

Lee

Hsieh²,

Huang³

et al. 2008

Int J Legal Med

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“…Because African and Asian elephants share a common ancestry with extinct mammoths (Mammuthus spp.) as members of the Elephantidae (Krause et al, 2006;Thomas et al, 2000), we expect that mammoths and other extinct elephantids moved similarly to extant elephants, except where there are major size, shape or other mechanically relevant differences. We expect that even dwarf insular forms, if morphologically similar to baby elephants, would have moved similarly.…”

Section: Do Asian and African Elephants Have Different Kinematics?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The two lineages of elephants have been separate for at least 6 million years (Thomas et al, 2000) and differ in size, anatomy and habitat, so locomotor differences might exist.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The locomotor kinematics of Asian and African elephants: changes with speed and size

Hutchinson

Schwerda

Famini

et al. 2006

Journal of Experimental Biology

135

182

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SUMMARY For centuries, elephant locomotion has been a contentious and confusing challenge for locomotion scientists to understand, not only because of technical difficulties but also because elephant locomotion is in some ways atypical of more familiar quadrupedal gaits. We analyzed the locomotor kinematics of over 2400 strides from 14 African and 48 Asian elephant individuals (body mass 116-4632 kg) freely moving over ground at a 17-fold range of speeds, from slow walking at 0.40 m s-1 to the fastest reliably recorded speed for elephants, 6.8 m s-1. These data reveal that African and Asian elephants have some subtle differences in how size-independent kinematic parameters change with speed. Although elephants use a lateral sequence footfall pattern, like many other quadrupeds, they maintain this footfall pattern at all speeds, shifting toward a 25% phase offset between limbs (singlefoot) as they increase speed. The duty factors of elephants are greater for the forelimbs than for the hindlimbs, so an aerial phase for the hindquarters is reached at slower speeds than for the forequarters. This aerial phase occurs at a Froude number of around 1,matching theoretical predictions. At faster speeds, stance and swing phase durations approach asymptotes, with the duty factor beginning to level off,concurrent with an increase in limb compliance that likely keeps peak forces relatively low. This increase of limb compliance is reflected by increased compression of the hindlimbs. Like other tetrapods, smaller elephants are relatively more athletic than larger ones, but still move very similarly to adults even at <500 kg. At any particular speed they adopt greater relative stride frequencies and relative stride lengths compared to larger elephants. This extends to near-maximal locomotor performance as well - smaller elephants reach greater Froude numbers and smaller duty factors, hence likely reach relatively greater peak loads on their limbs and produce this force more rapidly. A variety of lines of kinematic evidence support the inference that elephants change their mechanics near a Froude number of 1 (if not at slower speeds), at least to using more compliant limbs, if not spring-like whole-body kinetics. In some ways, elephants move similarly to many other quadrupeds,such as increasing speed mainly by increasing stride frequency (except at fast speeds), and they match scaling predictions for many stride parameters. The main difference from most other animals is that elephants never change their footfall pattern to a gait that uses a whole-body aerial phase. Our large dataset establishes what the normal kinematics of elephant locomotion are, and can also be applied to identify gait abnormalities that may signal musculoskeletal pathologies, a matter of great importance to keepers of captive elephants.

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“…The forest elephants have not yet been studied cytogenetically. The existing chromosome banding studies (Houck et al 2001) indicate, however, a strong conservation of elephant karyotypes since the evolutionary separation of Elephas maximus and Loxodonta africana 4-7 Myr ago (Thomas et al 2000;Vignaud et al 2002). After the submission of this manuscript, a Zoo-FISH study of aardvark and elephant genomes was published .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards the delineation of the ancestral eutherian genome organization: comparative genome maps of human and the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) generated by chromosome painting

Frönicke

Wienberg²,

Stone

et al. 2003

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

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This study presents a whole-genome comparison of human and a representative of the Afrotherian clade, the African elephant, generated by reciprocal Zoo-FISH. An analysis of Afrotheria genomes is of special interest, because recent DNA sequence comparisons identify them as the oldest placental mammalian clade. Complete sets of whole-chromosome specific painting probes for the African elephant and human were constructed by degenerate oligonucleotide-primed PCR amplification of flow-sorted chromosomes. Comparative genome maps are presented based on their hybridization patterns. These maps show that the elephant has a moderately rearranged chromosome complement when compared to humans. The human paint probes identified 53 evolutionary conserved segments on the 27 autosomal elephant chromosomes and the X chromosome. Reciprocal experiments with elephant probes delineated 68 conserved segments in the human genome. The comparison with a recent aardvark and elephant Zoo-FISH study delineates new chromosomal traits which link the two Afrotherian species phylogenetically. In the absence of any morphological evidence the chromosome painting data offer the first non-DNA sequence support for an Afrotherian clade. The comparative human and elephant genome maps provide new insights into the karyotype organization of the proto-afrotherian, the ancestor of extant placental mammals, which most probably consisted of 2n = 46 chromosomes.

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Molecular and morphological evidence on the phylogeny of the Elephantidae

Cited by 45 publications

References 38 publications

Ivory identification by DNA profiling of cytochrome b gene

Ivory identification by DNA profiling of cytochrome b gene

The locomotor kinematics of Asian and African elephants: changes with speed and size

Towards the delineation of the ancestral eutherian genome organization: comparative genome maps of human and the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) generated by chromosome painting

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