Arctoidea Explained

Arctoidea is a clade of mostly carnivorous mammals which include the extinct Hemicyonidae (dog-bears), and the extant Musteloidea (weasels, raccoons, skunks, red pandas), Pinnipedia (seals, sea lions), and Ursidae (bears), found in all continents from the Eocene,, to the present.^[1] The oldest group of the clade is the bears, as their CMAH gene is still intact. The gene became non-functional in the common ancestor of the Mustelida (the musteloids and pinnipeds).^[2] Arctoids are caniforms, along with dogs (canids) and extinct bear dogs (Amphicyonidae).The earliest caniforms were superficially similar to martens, which are tree-dwelling mustelids.Together with feliforms, caniforms compose the order Carnivora; sometimes Arctoidea can be considered a separate suborder from Caniformia and a sister taxon to Feliformia.

Systematics

Arctoidea was named by Flower (1869). It was reranked as the unranked clade Arctoidea by Hunt (2001), Hunt (2002) and Hunt (2002); it was reranked as the infraorder Arctoidea by Koretsky (2001), Zhai et al. (2003) and Labs Hochstein (2007). It was assigned to Carnivora by Flower (1883), Barnes (1987), Barnes (1988), Carroll (1988), Barnes (1989), Barnes (1992), Hunt (2001), Hunt (2002) and Hunt (2002); and to Caniformia by Tedford (1976), Bryant (1991), Wang and Tedford (1992), Tedford et al. (1994), Koretsky (2001), Zhai et al. (2003), Wang et al. (2005), Owen (2006), Peigné et al. (2006) and Labs Hochstein (2007).^{[3] [4] [5]}

Phylogeny

The cladogram is based on molecular phylogeny of six genes in Flynn (2005),^[6] with the musteloids updated following the multigene analysis of Law et al. (2018).^[7]

Notes and References

1. http://paleobackup.nceas.ucsb.edu:8110/cgi-bin/bridge.pl?action=checkTaxonInfo&taxon_no=41085&is_real_user=1 "Paleobiology Database: Arctoidea Basic info"
2. 10.1038/ncomms6750 . Ferrets exclusively synthesize Neu5Ac and express naturally humanized influenza a virus receptors . 2014 . Ng . Preston S.K. . Böhm . Raphael . Hartley-Tassell . Lauren E. . Steen . Jason A. . Wang . Hui . Lukowski . Samuel W. . Hawthorne . Paula L. . Trezise . Ann E.O. . Coloe . Peter J. . Grimmond . Sean M. . Haselhorst . Thomas . von Itzstein . Mark . Paton . Adrienne W. . Paton . James C. . Jennings . Michael P. . Nature Communications . 5 . 5750 . 25517696 . 4351649 .
3. R. M. Hunt. 2001. "Small Oligocene amphicyonids from North America (Paradaphoenus, Mammalia, Carnivora)". American Museum Novitates 3331:1–20
4. I. Koretsky. 2001. "Morphology and systematics of Miocene Phocinae (Mammalia: Carnivora) from Paratethys and the North Atlantic region". Geologica Hungarica Series Palaeontologica 54:1–109
5. J. Labs Hochstein. 2007. "A new species of Zodiolestes (Mammalia, Mustelidae) from the early Miocene of Florida". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(2):532–534
6. Flynn, J. J. . Finarelli, J. A. . Zehr, S. . Hsu, J. . Nedbal, M. A. . Molecular phylogeny of the Carnivora (Mammalia): Assessing the impact of increased sampling on resolving enigmatic relationships . 10.1080/10635150590923326 . Systematic Biology . 54 . 2 . 317–37 . 2005 . 16012099. free .
7. Law. Chris J.. Slater. Graham J.. Mehta. Rita S.. 2018-01-01. Lineage Diversity and Size Disparity in Musteloidea: Testing Patterns of Adaptive Radiation Using Molecular and Fossil-Based Methods. Systematic Biology. en. 67. 1. 127–144. 10.1093/sysbio/syx047. 28472434. 1063-5157. free.