Estimating the timing of early eukaryotic diversification with multigene molecular clocks

By Laura Wegener Parfrey, Daniel J. G. Lahr, Andrew H. Knoll, Laura A. Katz. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011

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Although macroscopic plants, animals, and fungi are the most familiar eukaryotes, the bulk of eukaryotic diversity is microbial. Elucidating the timing of diversification among the more than 70 lineages is key to understanding the evolution of eukaryotes. Here, we use taxon-rich multigene data combined with diverse fossils and a relaxed molecular clock framework to estimate the timing of the last common ancestor of extant eukaryotes and the divergence of major clades. Overall, these analyses suggest that the last common ancestor lived between 1866 and 1679 Ma, consistent with the earliest microfossils interpreted with confidence as eukaryotic. During this interval, the Earth's surface differed markedly from today; for example, the oceans were incompletely ventilated, with ferruginous and, after about 1800 Ma, sulfidic water masses commonly lying beneath moderately oxygenated surface waters. Our time estimates also indicate that the major clades of eukaryotes diverged before 1000 Ma, with most or all probably diverging before 1200 Ma. Fossils, however, suggest that diversity within major extant clades expanded later, beginning about 800 Ma, when the oceans began their transition to a more modern chemical state. In combination, paleontological and molecular approaches indicate that long stems preceded diversification in the major eukaryotic lineages.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Molecular Biology, Paleontology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/52c35fb0b57443bc9852958736a2d1e1c29883b4

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Citations in the corpus

Thoughts on the evolution and ecological niche of diatoms (2021, background): “The first primary endosymbiotic event producing oxygenic photoautotrophic eukaryotes happened around 1.5–2 Ba, yielding the glaucophyte, red algal, and green algal lineages (Yoon et al. 2004, Parfrey et al. 2011, Ku et al. 2014).”
The Hologenome Concept: Human, Animal and Plant Microbiota (2014, background): “Based on the fossil record, single cell eukaryotes first appeared ca. 1.8 billion years ago (Parfreya et al. 2011).”
Morphological approaches in studying fungi: collection, examination, isolation, sporulation and preservation (2020, background): “Later, it was realized that fungi are a separate kingdom, which diverged around one billion years ago (Baldauf & Palmer 1993, Bruns et al. 2006, Parfrey et al. 2011).”
The terrestrial biota prior to the origin of land plants (embryophytes): a review of the evidence (2015, background): “Recent molecular clock analyses (e.g. Parfrey et al. 2011) broadly agree with these proposals.”
A basin redox transect at the dawn of animal life (2012, neutral): “acdonald), (Berney and Pawlowski, 2006; Lartillot et al., 2009; Sperling et al., 2010; Erwin et al., 2011; Parfrey et al., 2011).”
Phylogenetics, divergence times and diversification from three genomic partitions in monocots (2015, background): “Moreover, the combination of lowcopy nuclear loci with plastid, mitochondrial and high-copy nuclear loci provides a robust dataset with which both to evaluate phylogenetic relationships and to estimate divergence times (Parfrey et al., 2011).”
Micropaleontology of the lower Mesoproterozoic Roper Group, Australia, and implications for early eukaryotic evolution (2016, neutral): “10), but generally suggest late Mesoproterozoic or younger diversi ﬁ cation (e.g., 1100 Ma, Heckman et al., 2001; 1200 Ma, Yoon et al., 2004; 1000 – 900 Ma, Parfrey et al., 2011; 936 Ma, Becker, 2013; and even ~700 Ma, Berney and Pawlowski, 2006).”