Mosaic foreleg convergence disentangles phylogeny from ecology in Cretaceous amber crickets
Yuan, W.; Jing, X.; Xu, Z.-Q.; Huang, H.; Yue, Y.; Ren, D.; Ma, L.-B.; Gu, J.-J.
Show abstract
Mosaic evolution assembles organisms from ancestral and derived parts, and the same trait can mislead phylogenetic reconstruction while recording ecology. Crickets from mid-Cretaceous Myanmar amber embody this conflict, combining a cricket-like body with digging forelegs like those of mole crickets. We placed these fossils onto a molecular phylogeny of living crickets and removed the foreleg characters, using a living cricket with convergent digging legs as a control. This foreleg module was the main source of phylogenetic distortion: under parsimony criteria, the fossils remain close relatives of mole crickets without it, while the control species returns to its position within Gryllidae. The same module carries most ecological information: its removal reduces cross-validated habitat-prediction accuracy from 77.8% to as low as 16.7%, below the majority-class baseline of 44.4%. We show that partitioning convergent modules from the conserved body plan separates phylogenetic signal from ecological information in the same mosaic anatomy.
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