A metaanalysis of bat phylogenetics and positive selection based on genomes and transcriptomes from 18 species

Hawkins, John A.; Kaczmarek, Maria E.; Müller, Marcel A.; Drosten, Christian; Press, William H.; Sawyer, Sara L.

The placement of R. ferrumequinum addresses the first branching of the order Chiroptera. The traditional division of order Chiroptera into Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera, the large and small bats, respectively, has been challenged in recent years as molecular phylogenetic analyses have gained prominence. An alternative history has been proposed, dividing bats into two suborders named Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera (51) . In the proposal, the microbat families Rhinopomatidae, Rhinolophidae, Hipposideridae, and Megadermatidae are joined with the megabats to form the new clade Yinpterochiroptera, while the rest of the microbats form Yangochiroptera. Our phylogeny agrees with this model, with R. ferrumequinum falling into Yinpterochiroptera (Fig. 3A) . This restructuring has gained ad-ditional recent support (9, 11, 13, 15, 52) , although it must be noted that the accurate rooting of ancient species groups is a notoriously difficult aspect of phylogenetics (44) .