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What is Afrotheria?
Jump to navigation Jump to search. Afrotheria is a clade of mammals, the living members of which belong to groups that are either currently living in Africa or of African origin: golden moles, elephant shrews (also known as sengis), tenrecs, aardvarks, hyraxes, elephants, sea cows, and several extinct clades.
How many species of Afrotheria are there?
The Afrotheria Specialist Group deals with very few species — there is only one aardvark, 6 hyraxes, 19 sengis, 21 golden moles, and 34 tenrecs. Many of these species have broad distributions in a wide variety of habitats, which means they are not particularly vulnerable to extinction (the aardvark, for example, and several hyraxes and sengis).
What is the IUCN Afrotheria Specialist Group?
The IUCN already has active groups that include elephants and sea cows, so when the Afrotheria Specialist Group was formed in 2001, it only included the remaining five “forgotten” groups of mammals. The Afrotheria Specialist Group deals with very few species — there is only one aardvark, 6 hyraxes, 19 sengis, 21 golden moles, and 34 tenrecs.
What are the different types of tenrecs?
Other spiny tenrecs are the two species of hedgehog tenrec ( Setifer setosus and Echinops telfairi) and the two species of streaked tenrec ( Hemicentetes semispinosus and H. nigriceps) The ORYZORICTINAE are furred tenrecs.
How many animals live in Afrotheria?
The IUCN Afrotheria Specialist Group notes that Afrotheria, as currently reconstructed, includes nearly a third of all mammalian orders currently found in Africa and Madagascar, but only 75 of more than 1,200 mammalian species in those areas.
Is Afrotheria at risk of extinction?
Many extant members of Afrotheria appear to have a high risk of extinction (perhaps related to the large size of many). Species loss within this already small group would comprise a particularly great loss of genetic and evolutionary diversity.
When was the afrotherian clade first proposed?
The afrotherian clade was originally proposed in 1998 based on analyses of DNA sequence data. However, previous studies had hinted at the close interrelationships among subsets of endemic African mammals; some of these studies date to the 1920s and there were sporadic papers in the 1980s and 1990s.