Close evolutionary affinities between freshwater corbulid bivalves from the Neogene of western Amazonia and Paleogene of the northern Great Plains, USA

Abstract

Freshwater corbulid bivalves found in Miocene deposits of western Amazonia have been considered products of an endemic radiation of a marine clade within the large lacustrine system occupying the region at that time. Our reexamination of Paleocene freshwater corbulids of the Tongue River Formation of western North Dakota and eastern Montana, however, extends the stratigraphic and geographic range of three Amazonian taxa— Pachydon, Ostomya, and Anticorbula—to the Paleocene of the northern Great Plains of the United States. Both Paleocene and Miocene freshwater corbulid taxa occur in large freshwater systems with an intermittent marine connection. To test the phylogenetic relationships of one particularly widespread Paleocene species ( Pachydon mactriformis), we conducted cladistic analyses using maximum parsimony and heuristic searches of matrices of conchologic characters. Seven species of Pachydon and Pebasia dispar from the western Amazonian Neogene, Pachydon mactriformis from the Paleocene of North Dakota, representative species of eight neotropical marine corbulid genera, and three additional corbulid taxa were included. Corbula was the outgroup. All analyses produced similar regions of stability within trees. One such area is a Pachydon crown group that includes P. mactriformis, indicating that Paleocene and Miocene Pachydon are not convergent. Our results also indicate that Pachydon does not represent a separate basal radiation within the family. However, we have not resolved a robust sister clade relationship for the Pachydon crown group. Two Amazonian Neogene taxa do not fall within the Pachydon crown group, and their phylogenetic position is not resolved. At this time, we do not have sufficient evidence to refine the definitions of Pachydon and Pachydontinae as monophyletic clades. Although we have evidence that three genera of corbulid bivalves ( Pachydon, Ostomya, and Anticorbula) in the Pebas Formation are not endemic and have long geologic histories, a species-level radiation occurs within the Amazonian Miocene, especially within Pachydon. In this radiation, morphologic and ecologic divergence is dramatic, and one species, P. obliquus, successfully invaded and dominated extreme, dysoxic habitats.