Data from: Reference genomes and fossils revise bat family phylogeny and biogeography

Résumé fourni par la source

Bats are extraordinary amongst mammals, having uniquely evolved powered-flight and laryngeal echolocation, along with disease resistance, extended healthspans and the ability to hibernate. However, bats’ evolutionary history and our understanding of these adaptations remain unresolved. We analysed chromosome-level, long-read genome assemblies from 103 bat species, including 42 new assemblies, representing all 21 bat families. This dataset, unprecedented in taxonomic scope and assembly quality, yielded a new bat phylogeny. We placed Myzopodidae as the earliest branch within Vespertilionoidea, and resolved yangochiropteran relationships, identifying Emballonuroidea and Vespertilionoidea as sister groups. Our analysis revealed a mosaic evolutionary history across bats and explained why previous phylogenetic studies were misled. Chromosomal ancestral state reconstructions supported 26 ancestral bat chromosomes. We integrated a morphological dataset of 699 characters for 65 species, including 44 pre-Quaternary fossils and representatives of most living bat families, with neutrally-evolving genomic sites. Fossilized Birth-Death and Dispersal-Extinction-Cladogenesis analyses showed that bats, and thus powered-flight, likely originated in Europe in the late Palaeocene, refuting African and North American origins. Placement of the fossil †Vielasia in the oldest ‘Eochiroptera’ clade indicates that laryngeal echolocation predates crown-bat diversification. Total evidence dating including the fossil taxa significantly reduced Unrepresented-Basal-Branch-Lengths compared to molecular-only divergence estimates. By integrating comprehensive genomic and morphological data sets, analysed using innovative methods, we resolve long-standing controversies in bat biology and provide new insights into bats’ evolutionary history and trait diversification.

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