Evolution of the Rodents – Advances in Phylogeny, Functional Morphology, and Development

Abstract

Cox, P. G., and L. Hautier (eds.). 2015. Evolution of the Rodents – Advances in Phylogeny, Functional Morphology, and Development. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, xiv + 611 pp., 18 color plates. ISBN 978-1-107-04433-3, price (hardback), £74.99; ISBN 978-1-316-30906-3, price (e-book), $96.00. Evolution of the Rodents is the fifth volume in the recently created “Cambridge Series in Morphology and Molecules: New Paradigms in Evolutionary Biology.” This series seeks to reconcile morphological and molecular approaches for studying the evolution of organisms and for example has previously published volumes devoted to carnivorans (Goswani and Friscia 2010) or chiropterans (Gunnell and Simmons 2012). Given their diversity and the vast literature devoted to the topic, a volume on rodents represented an enormous challenge, even more considering that the last authoritative work in this regard was the 30-year-old classic Evolutionary Relationships among Rodents: A Multidisciplinary Analysis (Luckett and Hartenberger 1985). Cox and Hautier take up the torch and their goal with Evolution of the Rodents is to provide “the best, more comprehensive review of the current research on the order Rodentia as a whole.” The references to the 1985 classic are evident already from the foreword, since the authors had the excellent idea of inviting W. P. Luckett and J.-L. Hartenberger to write it. This foreword set ups the scene for the rest of the book, outlining the progress in the different topics covered by the volume. However, things have changed a little bit since 1985. At that time, the origin of rodents and their affinities with other eutherian groups were hotly debated and the sister-group relationship between rodents and lagomorphs was questioned. Molecular phylogenetic studies were still in development and only sampled a few taxa, yielding contradictory results. The recent progress in this field has now solved those questions, providing a firm support for the Glires clade, which contains rodents and lagomorphs, and showing that this group is closely related to Archonta (primates, dermopterans, and scandentians—Murphy et al. 2001). Therefore, the 20 chapters of the multi-authored Evolution of the Rodents only consider these topics briefly … e-mail: isaac.casanovas{at}icp.cat.