AsianScientist (Mar. 26, 2011) – New research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA shows that the mosquito and fly share much closer ancestry in evolutionary history than expected.
In a collaborative study done by an international consortium of 27 scientists from the United States, Canada, Denmark, Singapore and Australia, the authors identified that the mosquito branched off the same evolutionary tree as flies 220 million years ago.
Besides the common pests (house flies, March flies, and mosquitoes), there are 152,000 named species of flies, representing around ten percent of all species on Earth.
During “bursts of evolution,” which occurred during unstable periods of Earth’s history, dramatic environmental change created new habitats for flies.
“What this research shows us is that the Fly Tree of Life went through three periods of fast diversification, with many different groups experimenting with ways to be a fly,” said one of the paper’s co-authors, Dr. David Yeates from CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences.
As both the mosquito and March fly – ancient representatives of these early branching groups – are still with us, Yeates believes that this research may provide an evolutionary framework for future comparative work on species that are critically important to both society and science.
The article can be found at: Wiegmann BM et al. (2011) Episodic radiations in the fly tree of life.
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Source: CSIRO.
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