ORCID Profile
0000-0001-8807-7499
Current Organisation
American Museum of Natural History
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Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 23-07-2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.07.21.453269
Abstract: Diet has been linked to the ersification of the bat superfamily Noctilionoidea, a group that underwent an impressive ecological adaptive radiation within Mammalia. For decades, studies have explored morphological adaptations and ersity of noctilionoid bats to reveal traits associated with their ecological ersity. Surprisingly, despite such interest and recent application of novel techniques, ecomorphological studies have failed to fully resolve the link between diet and a critical component of the feeding apparatus: dental morphology. Using multivariate dental topographic analysis and phylogenetic comparative methods, we examined the phylogenetic, biological and ecological signal in the dental morphology of noctilionoid bats. Analysing the lower first molars of 110 species, we explored relationships between diet and dental morphology, accounting for three different dimensions of diet (guild, composition and breadth). Phylogenetic and size-dependent structuring of the dental topography data shows it does not correlate only to diet, highlighting the need to account for multiple sources of variation. Frugivorous noctilionoids have sharper molars than other previously reported frugivorous mammals. Nectarivorous noctilionoids showed reduced lower molar crown height and steepness, whereas animalivorous species had larger molars. Dietary composition suggested that the intensity of exploitation of a resource is also linked to different dimensions of dental morphology. Increasing carnivory positively correlated with MA, explaining the highest proportion of its variation, and increasing frugivory explained the highest proportion of variation in all other variables. Dietary breadth showed generalist species have sharper, more topographically-complex molars, whereas specialist herbivores and specialist animalivores fell at opposite ends in the range of tooth steepness and crown height. Together, the results suggest that adaptations affecting different attributes of dental morphology likely facilitated the dietary ersity and specialisation found in Noctilionoidea.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2014
DOI: 10.1016/J.YMPEV.2014.03.009
Abstract: Pteropodidae is a erse Old World family of non-echolocating, frugivorous and nectarivorous bats that includes the flying foxes (genus Pteropus) and allied genera. The subfamily Pteropodinae includes the largest living bats and is distributed across an immense geographic range from islands in East Africa to the Cook Islands of Polynesia. These bats are keystone species in their ecosystems and some carry zoonotic diseases that are increasingly a focus of interest in biomedical research. Here we present a comprehensive phylogeny for pteropodines focused on Pteropus. The analyses included 50 of the ∼63 species of Pteropus and 11 species from 7 related genera. We obtained sequences of the cytochrome b and the 12S rRNA mitochondrial genes for all species and sequences of the nuclear RAG1, vWF, and BRCA1 genes for a subs le of taxa. Some of the sequences of Pteropus were obtained from skin biopsies of museum specimens including that of an extinct species, P. tokudae. The resulting trees recovered Pteropus as monophyletic, although further work is needed to determine whether P. personatus belongs in the genus. Monophyly of the majority of traditionally-recognized Pteropus species groups was rejected, but statistical support was strong for several clades on which we based a new classification of the Pteropus species into 13 species groups. Other noteworthy results emerged regarding species status of several problematic taxa, including recognition of P. capistratus and P. ennisae as distinct species, paraphyly of the P. hypomelanus complex, and conspecific status of P. pelewensis pelewensis and P. p. yapensis. Relationships among the pteropodine genera were not completely resolved with the current dataset. Divergence time analysis suggests that Pteropus originated in the Miocene and that two independent bursts of ersification occurred in the Pleistocene in different regions of the Indo-Pacific realm.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-11-2019
DOI: 10.1111/JBI.13750
Publisher: Museum and Institute of Zoology at the Polish Academy of Sciences
Date: 06-2008
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 26-03-2021
DOI: 10.3390/V13040563
Abstract: Diverse paramyxoviruses have coevolved with their bat hosts, including fruit bats such as flying foxes (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae). Several of these viruses are zoonotic, but the ersity and distribution of Paramyxoviridae are poorly understood. We screened pooled feces s les from three Pteropus v yrus colonies and assayed tissues, rectal swabs, and oral swabs from 95 in iduals of 23 pteropodid species s led at 17 sites across the Indonesian archipelago with a conventional paramyxovirus PCR all tested negative. S les from 43 in iduals were screened with next generation sequencing (NGS), and a single Pteropus v yrus collected near Flores had Tioman virus sequencing reads. Tioman virus is a bat-borne virus in the genus Pararubulavirus with prior evidence of spillover to humans. This work expands the known range of Tioman virus, and it is likely that this isolated colony likely has sustained intergenerational transmission over a long period.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 28-04-2014
Abstract: Morphological characters are indispensable in phylogenetic analyses for understanding the pattern, process, and tempo of evolution. If characters are independent and free of systematic errors, then combining as many different kinds of characters as are available will result in the best-supported phylogenetic hypotheses. But since morphological characters are subject to natural selection for function and arise from the expression of developmental pathways, they may not be independent, a situation that may lify any underlying homoplasy. Here, we use new dental and multi-locus genetic data from bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) to quantify saturation and similarity in morphological characters and introduce two likelihood-based approaches to identify strongly conflicting characters and integrate morphological and molecular data. We implement these methods to analyze the phylogeny of incomplete Miocene fossils in the radiation of Phyllostomidae (New World Leaf-nosed Bats), perhaps the most ecologically erse family of living mammals. Morphological characters produced trees incongruent with molecular phylogenies, were saturated, and showed rates of change higher than most molecular substitution rates. Dental characters encoded variation similar to that in other morphological characters, while molecular characters encoded highly dissimilar variation in comparison. Saturation and high rates of change indicate randomization of phylogenetic signal in the morphological data, and extensive similarity suggests characters are non-independent and errors are lified. To integrate the morphological data into tree building while accounting for homoplasy, we used statistical molecular scaffolds and combined phylogenetic analyses excluding a small subset of strongly conflicting dental characters. The phylogenies revealed the Miocene nectar-feeding †Palynephyllum nests within the crown nectar-feeding South American subfamily Lonchophyllinae, while the Miocene genus †Notonycteris is sister to the extant carnivorous V yrum. These relationships imply new calibration points for timing of radiation of the ecologically erse Phyllostomidae. [Chiroptera conflict dentition morphology Phyllostomidae saturation scaffold systematic error.].
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 14-03-2022
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-01-2015
Publisher: Hindawi Limited
Date: 11-2022
DOI: 10.1111/TBED.14762
Abstract: Bats are important reservoirs for alpha- and beta-coronaviruses. Coronaviruses (CoV) have been detected in pteropodid bats from several Southeast Asian countries, but little is known about coronaviruses in the Indonesian archipelago in proportion to its mammalian bio ersity. In this study, we screened pooled faecal s les from the Indonesian colonies of Pteropus v yrus with unbiased next-generation sequencing. Bat CoVs related to Rousettus leschenaultii CoV HKU9 and Eidolon helvum CoV were detected. The 121 faecal s les were further screened using a conventional hemi-nested pan-coronavirus PCR assay. Three positive s les were successfully sequenced, and phylogenetic reconstruction revealed the presence of alpha- and beta-coronaviruses. CoVs belonging to the subgenera Nobecovirus, Decacovirus and Pedacovirus were detected in a single P. v yrus roost. This study expands current knowledge of coronavirus ersity in Indonesian flying foxes, highlighting the need for longitudinal surveillance of colonies as continuing urbanization and deforestation heighten the risk of spillover events.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 2013
Location: United States of America
Location: United States of America
No related grants have been discovered for Nancy B. Simmons.