GoKawiil
Tech News
A study published in Nature by Morales and colleagues presents assembled genomes for 103 bat species, including 42 newly generated for the project, covering representatives of every known bat taxonomic family. The dataset gives scientists a broad genomic view of bat diversity and evolutionary history across the order Chiroptera.
Researchers built a combined dataset of DNA and fossil traits to reconstruct how living bat families relate to extinct lineages and when they diverged. The study compiled morphological data from 44 pre-Quaternary fossil bats alongside genome-matched representatives of every living bat family, filtering out unreliable or redundant characters before merging this with neutral genomic sites. They applied a fossilized birth-death modeling approach to jointly estimate the bat family tree and its divergence timeline.