Manidae Explained

Manidae ("spirits") is the only extant family of pangolins from superfamily Manoidea. This family comprises three genera (Manis from subfamily Maninae, Phataginus from subfamily Phatagininae, and Smutsia from subfamily Smutsiinae),^{[1] [2]} as well as extinct Fayum pangolin.^[3]

Classification and phylogeny

History of classification

All species of living pangolin had been assigned to the genus Manis until the late 2000s, when research prompted the splitting of extant pangolins into three genera: Manis, Phataginus, and Smutsia.

Taxonomy

• Family: Manidae (pangolins)
  • Subfamily: Maninae (Gray, 1821) (Asian pangolins)
    • Genus: Manis (Linnaeus, 1758) (Asian pangolin)
      • (unranked): northern Asian clade
        • Manis pentadactyla (Linnaeus, 1758) (Chinese pangolin)
        • †Manis hungarica (Kormos, 1934)
      • (unranked): southern Asian clade
        • Manis crassicaudata (Gray, 1827) (Indian pangolin)
        • Manis sp. (Scale_H4 & Scale_H8)^{[4] [5]}
        • †Manis lydekkeri (Dubois, 1908)
        • Subgenus: Paramanis (Pocock, 1924) (Southeast Asian pangolin)
          • Manis javanica (Desmarest, 1822) (Sunda pangolin)
          • Manis culionensis (de Elera, 1895) (Philippine pangolin)
          • †Manis palaeojavanica (Dubois, 1907) (giant Asian pangolin)
  • (unranked): African clade
    • Subfamily: Phatagininae (Gaubert, 2017) (small African pangolins)
      • Genus: Phataginus (Rafinesque, 1821) (African tree pangolin)
        • Phataginus tetradactyla (Linnaeus, 1766) (long-tailed pangolin)
        • Phataginus tricuspis (Rafinesque, 1821) (tree pangolin)
    • Subfamily: Smutsiinae (Gray, 1873) (large African pangolins)
      • Genus: Smutsia (Gray, 1865) (African ground pangolin)
        • Smutsia gigantea (Illiger, 1815) (giant pangolin)
        • Smutsia temmincki (Smuts, 1832) (ground pangolin)
        • †Smutsia olteniensis (Terhune, 2021)^[6]
  • Incertae sedis
    • †Manidae sp. [''DPC 3972'' & ''DPC 4364''] (Gebo & Rasmussen, 1985) (Fayum pangolin)

Phylogeny

Phylogenetic position of family Manidae within superfamily Manoidea.^{[7] [8] [9] [10] [2]}

See also

• Mammal classification
• Manoidea

External links

• ZSL Pangolin Conservation
• Pangolin: Wildlife summary from the African Wildlife Foundation
• Tree of Life of Pholidota
• National Geographic video of a pangolin
• Proceedings of the Workshop on Trade and Conservation of Pangolins Native to South and Southeast Asia (PDF)
• The Phylogeny of Living and Extinct Pangolins (Mammalia, Pholidota) and Associated Taxa: A Morphology Based Analysis (PDF)
• Bromley, Victoria (Director/Producer), Young, Nora (Narrator/Host), Diekmann, Maria . 2018 . Nature: The World's Most Wanted Animal . PBS . United States .
• Coronavirus: Revenge of the Pangolins? The New York Times, March 6, 2020.

Notes and References

1. Book: Schlitter, Duane A. . Wilson . D.E. . Reeder . D.M. . 2005 . Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference . 3rd . Baltimore, Maryland, USA . Johns Hopkins University Press . 530 . 978-0-8018-8221-0.
2. Philippe Gaubert, Agostinho Antunes, Hao Meng, Lin Miao, Stéphane Peigné, Fabienne Justy, Flobert Njiokou, Sylvain Dufour, Emmanuel Danquah, Jayanthi Alahakoon, Erik Verheyen, William T Stanley, Stephen J O’Brien, Warren E Johnson, Shu-Jin Luo (2018) "The Complete Phylogeny of Pangolins: Scaling Up Resources for the Molecular Tracing of the Most Trafficked Mammals on Earth" Journal of Heredity, Volume 109, Issue 4, Pages 347–359
3. Daniel Gebo, D. Tab Rasmussen (1985.) "The Earliest Fossil Pangolin (Pholidota: Manidae) from Africa" Journal of Mammalogy 66(3):538
4. Huarong Zhang, Mark P. Miller, Feng Yang, Hon Ki Chan, Philippe Gaubert, Gary Ades, Gunter A. Fischer (2015.) "Molecular tracing of confiscated pangolin scales for conservation and illegal trade monitoring in Southeast Asia", Global Ecology and Conservation, Volume 4, Pages 414-422
5. Jingyang Hu, Christian Roos, Xue Lv, Weimin Kuang, Li Yu (2020.) "Molecular Genetics Supports a Potential Fifth Asian Pangolin Species (Mammalia, Pholidota, Manis)" Zoological Science, 37(6):538-543
6. Terhune . C. E. . Gaudin . T. . Curran . S. . Petculescu . A. . 2021 . The youngest pangolin (Mammalia, Pholidota) from Europe . Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology . 41 . 4 . e1990075 . 10.1080/02724634.2021.1990075. 245394367 .
7. Gaudin . Timothy . 2009 . The Phylogeny of Living and Extinct Pangolins (Mammalia, Pholidota) and Associated Taxa: A Morphology Based Analysis . Journal of Mammalian Evolution . Springer Science+Business Media . Heidelberg, Germany . 16 . 4 . 235–305 . 10.1007/s10914-009-9119-9 . 1773698 . 2021-01-20 . 2015-09-25 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150925134257/http://web2.utc.edu/~gvv824/Gaudin%20et%20al%202009.pdf . dead .
8. Kondrashov . Peter . Agadjanian . Alexandre K. . A nearly complete skeleton of Ernanodon (Mammalia, Palaeanodonta) from Mongolia: morphofunctional analysis . Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology . 32 . 5 . 2012 . 0272-4634 . 10.1080/02724634.2012.694319 . 983–1001. 86059673 .
9. Du Toit . Z. . Grobler . J. P. . Kotzé . A. . Jansen . R. . Brettschneider . H. . Dalton . D. L. . The complete mitochondrial genome of Temminck's ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii; Smuts, 1832) and phylogenetic position of the Pholidota (Weber, 1904) . Gene . 551 . 1 . 2014 . 49–54 . 10.1016/j.gene.2014.08.040 . 25158133.
10. du Toit . Z. . du Plessis . M. . Dalton . D. L. . Jansen . R. . Paul Grobler . J. . Kotzé . A. . Mitochondrial genomes of African pangolins and insights into evolutionary patterns and phylogeny of the family Manidae . BMC Genomics . 18 . 1 . 2017 . 10.1186/s12864-017-4140-5 . 28934931 . free . 5609056 . 746.