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American Zoologist 2001 41(3):507-525; doi:10.1093/icb/41.3.507
© 2001 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
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Using Phylogenies to Study Convergence: The Case of the Ant-Eating Mammals1

Karen Zich Reiss1
1 Department of Biological Sciences, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California 95521

Identifying when homoplasy is due to convergence requires confidence in trees and precise analysis of potentially convergent characters. Some features of mammals that eat mostly ants and termites are used as examples of convergence; the most speciose assemblages of these mammals are in the orders Xenarthra and Pholidota. My studies on cranial muscles in xenarthrans and pholidotans aim to 1) precisely describe the anatomy in ant-eating and non-ant-eating lineages, 2) assess variation among ant-eating lineages, and 3) compare the most derived conditions (in xenarthran anteaters and pholidotan pangolins). These data clarify the nature of morphological adaptation in ant-eating mammals, and when combined with accumulating phylogenetic studies, allow us to distinguish features that have evolved convergently from those that are variable but not correlated with diet. Interpreting the extreme similarity in anteaters and pangolins remains problematic due to lingering disagreement among phylogenetic hypotheses. Prevailing opinion favors interpretation of these similarities as convergent.


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