What can chromosomes tell us about the origins of primates?

Abstract

What can chromosomes tell us about the origins of primates? Barbara Picone1, Luca Sineo1, Daniele Silvestro2,3, Massimiliano DelPero4 and Judith Masters5 1 Dipartimento di Biologia Animale “G. Reverberi”, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Via Archirafi 18, 90123 Palermo, Italy; 2 Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany ; 3 Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Frankfurt am Main, Germany;4 Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e dell’Uomo, Università degli Studi di Torino, Via Accademia Albertina 13, 10124 Torino, Italy; 5Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Fort Hare, Private Bag X1314, Alice 5700, South Africa; Our study investigated the usefulness of chromosome painting data in analysing phylogenetic affinities among the orders included in Euarchontoglires (Primates, Rodentia, Scandentia, Lagomorpha and Dermoptera). We applied Maximum Parsimony and Baysian inference in the comparison of karyotypic similarities and differences visualised among 41 Euarchontaglires species and one monotreme outgroup. In total, 161 characters were identified on the basis of presence/absence of human orthologous segmental associations. The inclusion of this large sample covering a wide phylogenetic spectrum revealed that some syntenies previously reported as synapomorphic are in fact homoplastic traits. The high levels of homoplasy reflected in our data suggest that the same associations occur repeatedly. Karyotype evolution is relatively rapid, making it more informative about shallow rather than deep divergences.