Evolution and Biogeography of Talpid Moles from Continental East Asia and the Japanese Islands Inferred from Mitochondrial and Nuclear Gene Sequences
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We sequenced the cytochrome b gene from two little-studied mammal species from the highlands of Southwest China, the long-tailed mole Scaptonyx fusicaudus and the gracile shrew-like mole Uropsilus gracilis. This data was used to examine the phylogenetic relationships among 19 talpid species within the family Talpidae (Mammalia: Eulipotyphla). Cytochrome b gene trees supported a basal placement of shrew-like moles (Uropsilus) within the Talpidae, and suggested that fossorial specializations arose twice during talpid evolution. To assess the evolutionary relationships of moles endemic to this region, we additionally sequenced the 12S rRNA gene and the nuclear recombination-activating gene-1 from eight and ten East Asian taxa, respectively. Analyses of these single and concatenated data sets suggested that East Asian shrew moles diverged prior to the evolution of fossorial Eurasian moles. However, we were unable to determine whether semi-fossorial shrew moles are monophyletic. In contrast, fossorial Eurasian genera (Talpa, Mogera and Euroscaptor) were consistently found to form a monophyletic clade, with Mogera and Euroscaptor representing sister taxa. Furthermore, this fossorial clade grouped with the semi-aquatic Desmana, although with fairly low (35-62%) bootstrap support. Mogera imaizumii was found to be more closely related to M. wogura than to M. tokudae. This implies that the ancestors of these three species entered Japan from the Asian continent in this order via a series of migration events, suggesting that the Japanese Islands have played an important role in preserving mole lineages from ancient to recent times.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".