Afrosoricida

AfrosoricidaStanhope, 1998

Accepterad namn, MR.284

Traditionally included in the Lipotyphla (= Insectivora sensu stricto). Various molecular studies (Madsen et al., 2001; Murphy et al., 2001a, b; Springer et al., 1999) and syntheses of morphological and molecular data (Asher et al., 2003; Liu et al., 2001) support a clade containing tenrecs and golden moles, which Stanhope et al. (1998) named Afrosoricida. This name is inappropriate since this clade does not include soricids, and could lead to confusion with the soricid subgenus Afrosorex Hutterer, 1986. Noting that Tenrecomorpha Butler, 1972 may be a prior, and more explicit name for this clade following Simpson’s (1945) guidelines for naming superfamial taxa, Bronner et al. (2003) nevertheless accepted Afrosoricida because this name is entrenched in the recent literature.While Afrosoricida is widely used as a name for a tenrec-golden mole clade (e.g., Cao et al., 2000; de Jong et al., 2003; Douady et al., 2002a,b; Hedges, 2001; Helgen, 2003a</... [truncated]

• Wilson, D and Reeder, D. (eds.) 2005. Mammal Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. 3rd ed. -- 2142 pp. Johns Hopkins University Press.