Dataset Information

Freshwater gobies 30 million years ago: New insights into character evolution and phylogenetic relationships of †Pirskeniidae (Gobioidei, Teleostei).

ABSTRACT: The modern Gobioidei (Teleostei) comprise eight families, but the extinct †Pirskeniidae from the lower Oligocene of the Czech Republic indicate that further families may have existed in the past. However, the validity of the †Pirskeniidae has been questioned and its single genus †Pirskenius has been assigned to the extant family Eleotridae in previous works. The objective of this study is to clarify the status of the †Pirskeniidae. Whether or not the †Pirskeniidae should be synonymised with the Eleotridae is also interesting from a biogeographical point of view as Eleotridae is not present in Europe or the Mediterranean Sea today. We present new specimens and re-examine the material on which the two known species of †Pirskenius are based (†P. diatomaceus Obrhelová, 1961; †P. radoni P?ikryl, 2014). To provide a context for phylogenetically informative characters related to the palatine and the branchiostegal rays, three early-branching gobioids (Rhyacichthys, Protogobius, Perccottus), an eleotrid (Eleotris) and a gobiid (Gobius) were subjected to micro-CT analysis. The new data justify revalidation of the family †Pirskeniidae, and a revised diagnosis is presented for both †Pirskenius and †Pirskeniidae. Moreover, we provide for the first time an attempt to relate a fossil gobioid to extant taxa based on phylogenetic analysis. The results indicate a sister-group relationship of †Pirskeniidae to the Thalasseleotrididae + Gobiidae + Oxudercidae clade. Considering the fossil record, the arrival of gobioids in freshwater habitats in the early Oligocene apparently had generated new lineages that finally were not successful and became extinct shortly after they had diverged. There is currently no evidence that the Eleotridae was present in the European ichthyofauna in the past.

SUBMITTER: Reichenbacher B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7446829 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Freshwater gobies 30 million years ago: New insights into character evolution and phylogenetic relationships of †Pirskeniidae (Gobioidei, Teleostei).

Reichenbacher Bettina B Přikryl Tomáš T Cerwenka Alexander F AF Keith Philippe P Gierl Christoph C Dohrmann Martin M

PloS one 20200824 8

The modern Gobioidei (Teleostei) comprise eight families, but the extinct †Pirskeniidae from the lower Oligocene of the Czech Republic indicate that further families may have existed in the past. However, the validity of the †Pirskeniidae has been questioned and its single genus †Pirskenius has been assigned to the extant family Eleotridae in previous works. The objective of this study is to clarify the status of the †Pirskeniidae. Whether or not the †Pirskeniidae should be synonymised with the ...[more]

PMID: 32834000

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Project description:The suborder Gobioidei is among the most diverse groups of vertebrates, comprising about 2310 species. In the fossil record gobioids date back to the early Eocene (c. 50 m.y. ago), and a considerable increase in numbers of described species is evident since the middle Miocene (c. 16 m.y. ago). About 40 skeleton-based gobioid species and > 100 otolith-based species have been described until to date. However, assignment of a fossil gobioid species to specific families has often remained tentative, even if well preserved complete specimens are available. The reasons are that synapomorphies that can be recognized in a fossil skeleton are rare (or absent) and that no phylogenetic framework applicable to gobioid fossils exists. Here we aim to overcome this problem by developing a phylogenetic total evidence framework that is suitable to place a fossil skeleton-based gobioid at family level. Using both literature and newly collected data we assembled a morphological character matrix (48 characters) for 29 extant species, representing all extant gobioid families, and ten fossil gobioid species, and we compiled a multi-gene concatenated alignment (supermatrix; 6271 bp) of published molecular sequence data for the extant species. Bayesian and Maximum Parsimony analyses revealed that our selection of extant species was sufficient to achieve a molecular 'backbone' that fully conforms to previous molecular work. Our data revealed that inclusion of all fossil species simultaneously produced very poorly resolved trees, even for some extant taxa. In contrast, addition of a single fossil species to the total evidence data set of the extant species provided new insight in its possible placement at family level, especially in a Bayesian framework. Five out of the ten fossil species were recovered in the same family as had been suggested in previous works based on comparative morphology. The remaining five fossil species had hitherto been left as family incertae sedis. Now, based on our phylogenetic framework, new and mostly well supported hypotheses to which clades they could belong can be presented. We conclude that the total evidence framework presented here will be beneficial for all future work dealing with the phylogenetic placement of a fossil skeleton-based gobioid and thus will help to improve our understanding of the evolutionary history of these fascinating fishes. Moreover, our data highlight that increased sampling of fossil taxa in a total-evidence context is not universally beneficial, as might be expected, but strongly depends on the study group and peculiarities of the morphological data.

Dataset Information

Freshwater gobies 30 million years ago: New insights into character evolution and phylogenetic relationships of †Pirskeniidae (Gobioidei, Teleostei).

Publications

Freshwater gobies 30 million years ago: New insights into character evolution and phylogenetic relationships of †Pirskeniidae (Gobioidei, Teleostei).

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