The order Insectivora (from

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''insectum'' "insect" and ''vorare'' "to eat") is a now-abandoned biological grouping within the class of

mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

s. Some species have now been moved out, leaving the remaining ones in the order Eulipotyphla within the larger clade Laurasiatheria, which makes up one of the basal clades of placental

History

Before the era of widespread

DNA sequencing DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. The ...

, the grouping was used as a

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage that includes organisms with mixed evolutionary origin but does not include their most recent common ancestor. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as Homoplasy, homoplasies ...

taxon for a variety of small to very small, relatively unspecialised mammals that feed upon insects. Since any primitive-looking fossil group of placental mammals was commonly assigned to this order for convenience, it was held to constitute the basal stock out of which other placental orders had evolved. Therefore, at its widest extent, the order Insectivora represented an evolutionary grade rather than a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

. Taxonomy has been refined in recent years, and treeshrews, elephant shrews, and colugos have now been placed in separate orders, as have many fossil groups that were formerly included here. For some time it was held that the remaining insectivoran families constituted a

monophyletic In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent co ...

grouping, or clade, to which the name Lipotyphla had long been applied. However, molecular evidence indicated that Chrysochloridae ( golden moles), Tenrecidae ( tenrecs), and Potamogalidae ( otter shrews) should also be separated as a new order Afrosoricida. Erinaceidae ( hedgehogs) was then also split off into a separate order ( Erinaceomorpha) from the remainder (termed Soricomorpha), comprising the families Soricidae (

shrew Shrews ( family Soricidae) are small mole-like mammals classified in the order Eulipotyphla. True shrews are not to be confused with treeshrews, otter shrews, elephant shrews, West Indies shrews, or marsupial shrews, which belong to dif ...

s), Talpidae ( moles), Solenodontidae, and Nesophontidae. These two orders then replaced Insectivora. This scheme was undermined when molecular studies indicated that Soricomorpha is

paraphyletic Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In co ...

, because Soricidae shared a more recent common ancestor with Erinaceidae than with other soricomorphs. However, the combination of Soricidae and Erinaceidae, referred to as order Eulipotyphla, has been shown to be monophyletic.

Classification

* Order Eulipotyphla (remnant of 'Insectivora') ** Family Erinaceidae *** Subfamily Erinaceinae: hedgehogs *** Subfamily Hylomyinae: moonrats and gymnures ** Family Soricidae *** Southern short-tailed shrew

Subfamily Crocidurinae: white-toothed shrews *** Subfamily Soricinae: red-toothed shrews *** Subfamily Myosoricinae: African white-toothed shrews ** Family Talpidae *** Subfamily Desmaninae: desmans *** Subfamily Talpinae: moles *** Subfamily Uropsilinae: shrew moles ** Family Solenodontidae: solenodons ** Family Nesophontidae: extinct West Indian shrews Family-level cladogram of extant insectivoran relationships, following Roca et al.: These families have been placed within Insectivora in the past: :* Family Chrysochloridae ( golden moles) :* Family Tenrecidae ( tenrecs) :*Family Potamogalidae ( otter shrews) :* Family Macroscelididae ( elephant shrews) :* Family Tupaiidae ( true treeshrews) :*Family Ptilocercidae ( pen-tailed treeshrew) :* Family Cynocephalidae ( colugos) Not to be confused with

insectivore file:Common brown robberfly with prey.jpg, A Asilidae, robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivore, carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the Entomophagy ...

s (the eaters of insects considered as a feeding behavior), many of which do not belong to Eulipotyphla or the other taxa formerly included within Insectivora.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Obsolete mammal taxa Polyphyletic groups

History

Classification

See also

References

External links