Old lineages in a new ecosystem: diversification of arcellinid amoebae (Amoebozoa) and peatland mosses.

ABSTRACT: Arcellinid testate amoebae (Amoebozoa) form a group of free-living microbial eukaryotes with one of the oldest fossil records known, yet several aspects of their evolutionary history remain poorly understood. Arcellinids occur in a range of terrestrial, freshwater and even brackish habitats; however, many arcellinid morphospecies such as Hyalosphenia papilio are particularly abundant in Sphagnum-dominated peatlands, a relatively new ecosystem that appeared during the diversification of Sphagnum species in the Miocene (5-20 Myr ago). Here, we reconstruct divergence times in arcellinid testate amoebae after selecting several fossils for clock calibrations and then infer whether or not arcellinids followed a pattern of diversification that parallels the pattern described for Sphagnum. We foun

SUBMITTER: Fiz-Palacios O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3999201 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature