The phylogenetic position of the zokors (Myospalacinae) and comments on the families of muroids (Rodentia)

Are the Rhizomyinae and the Spalacinae closely related? Contradistinctive conclusions between genetics and palaeontology

“…These studies are listed in Table 2. The results in general strongly indicate that the Rhizomyinae and the Spalacinae, together with the (Hinton, 1933) Late Miocene / Early Pliocene China, India, Pakistan Miorhizomys pilgrimi (Hinton, 1933) Late Miocene / Early Pliocene China, India, Pakistan Miorhizomys blacki (Flynn, 1982) Late Miocene / Early Pliocene China Miorhizomys choristos (Flynn, 1982) Late Miocene India, Pakistan Miorhizomys micrus (Flynn, 1982) Late Miocene India Miorhizomys tetracharax (Flynn, 1982) Late Miocene China, India, Pakistan Miorhizomys harii (Prasad, 1968) Late Miocene / Early Pliocene India a Type species Norris et al (2004) and Steppan et al (2004), on the basis of their data, proposed placing the Rhizomyinae and the Spalacinae in a separate family, Spalacidae, leaving the family name Muridae to all other members of the superfamily Muroidea. The close relationship between the Myospalacinae and Rhizomyinae and the Spalacinae has been confirmed in a study by Lin et al (2014) based on the results of transcriptome sequencing.…”

Phylogeography of the Malagasy ring-tailed mongoose,Galidia elegans, from mtDNA sequence analysis

“…In addition, autapomorphic indel characters were excluded from the analysis. Furthermore, in this scheme, gaps were treated as fifth character states, although this may result in the slight upweighting of gaps (Simmons and Ochoterena 2000;Norris et al 2003).…”

The Input of DNA Sequences to Animal Systematics: Rodents as Study Cases

“…On the other hand, molecular data gathered to date rather showed the close relatedness of Rhizomys and Tachyoryctes, that both Jansa & Weksler (2004) and Steppan et al (2004) considered as belonging to the Rhizomyinae, an hypothesis that would mean the disappearance of the Tachyorictinae subfamily as a taxonomic rank. Finally, Norris et al (2004) and Jansa et al (2009) a sister group relationships between Myospalacinae and Spalacinae, an affinity that is however not strongly supported.…”

“…The content and internal relationships of Spalacidae have long been debated (see Gogolevskaya et al, 2010 for details), until Jansa & Weksler (2004) and Norris et al (2004) recognized Myospalacinae, Rhizomyinae, and Spalacinae as distinct, but closely related subfamilies of Spalacidae within the Muroidea based on nuclear as well as mitochondrial sequence comparisons. This result was later confirmed by Gogolevskaya et al (2010) who showed that representatives of these subfamilies shared the same variants of small genetic sequences, namely the B1 small interspersed elements (SINEs) and the 4.5S I small nuclear RNA.…”