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Published May 2018 | Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Mitogenomics supports an unexpected taxonomic relationship for the extinct diving duck Chendytes lawi and definitively places the extinct Labrador Duck

Abstract

Chendytes lawi, an extinct flightless diving anseriform from coastal California, was traditionally classified as a sea duck, tribe Mergini, based on similarities in osteological characters. We recover and analyze mitochondrial genomes of C. lawi and five additional Mergini species, including the extinct Labrador Duck, Camptorhyncus labradorius. Despite its diving morphology, C. lawi is reconstructed as an ancient relictual lineage basal to the dabbling ducks (tribe Anatini), revealing an additional example of convergent evolution of characters related to feeding behavior among ducks. The Labrador Duck is sister to Steller's Eider which may provide insights into the evolution and ecology of this poorly known extinct species. Our results demonstrate that inclusion of full length mitogenomes, from taxonomically distributed ancient and modern sources can improve phylogeny reconstruction of groups previously assessed with shorter single-gene mitochondrial sequences.

Additional Information

© 2017 Elsevier Inc. Received 20 June 2017, Revised 27 October 2017, Accepted 5 December 2017, Available online 13 December 2017. J.C.B acknowledges support from a GAANN Graduate Support Fellowship (UCLA). D.A.G. gratefully acknowledges support from a National Institute of Health Training Grant in Genomic Analysis and Interpretation (T32HG002536). We appreciate NASA Astrobiology funds to Jacobs in support of laboratory costs. Funding for the presentation of this research at the 2017 meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology was provided by UCLA Graduate Division. The authors also thank Laurie Sorenson for laboratory assistance. We are especially grateful to Shawn Cokus and David Lopez of the UCLA QCB Collaboratory for their assistance with processing of the high throughput sequencing data. This work would not have been possible without the specimens provided by the curator Kathy Molina of the UCLA Donald R. Dickey Bird and Mammal Collection and the curators Paul Sweet and Joel Cracraft of the Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History.

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August 19, 2023
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