Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Feliformia is a suborder within the order Carnivora consisting of "cat-like" carnivorans, including cats (large and small), hyenas, mongooses, viverrids, and related taxa. Feliformia stands in contrast to the other suborder of Carnivora, Caniformia consisting of "dog-like" carnivorans (includes Canoidea). [1]
Cats present a notable instance of virogene sequences demonstrating common descent. The standard phylogenetic tree for Felidae have smaller cats (Felis chaus, Felis silvestris, Felis nigripes, and Felis catus) diverging from larger cats such as the subfamily Pantherinae and other carnivores.
The project of a complete description of the phylogenetic relationships among all biological species is dubbed the "tree of life". This involves inference of ages of divergence for all hypothesized clades; for example, the MRCA of all Carnivora (cats, dogs, etc.) is estimated to have diverged some 42 million years ago . [6]
The results are a phylogenetic tree—a diagram depicting the hypothetical relationships between organisms and their evolutionary history. [4] The tips of a phylogenetic tree can be living taxa or fossils, which represent the present time or "end" of an evolutionary lineage, respectively. A phylogenetic diagram can be rooted or unrooted.
A tree of life, like this one from Charles Darwin's notebooks c. July 1837, implies a single common ancestor at its root (labelled "1"). A phylogenetic tree directly portrays the idea of evolution by descent from a single ancestor. [3] An early tree of life was sketched by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in his Philosophie zoologique in 1809.
The idea of a tree of life arose from ancient notions of a ladder-like progression from lower into higher forms of life (such as in the Great Chain of Being).Early representations of "branching" phylogenetic trees include a "paleontological chart" showing the geological relationships among plants and animals in the book Elementary Geology, by Edward Hitchcock (first edition: 1840).
The trees also helped show that F. s. lybica gave rise to the domesticated cats of today. F. s. silvestris showed a very early branching away from the other groups, but still shares a very early common ancestor with the rest of the clades. [5] Domesticated cats originated [11] from near-eastern and Egyptian populations of F. s. lybica. The ...
The Open Tree of Life is an online phylogenetic tree of life – a collaborative effort, funded by the National Science Foundation. [2] [3] The first draft, including 2.3 million species, was released in September 2015. [4] The Interactive graph allows the user to zoom in to taxonomic classifications, phylogenetic trees, and information about a ...