Mammals across multiple lineages have repeatedly specialized on ants and termites, evolving similar traits such as reduced or absent teeth and long sticky tongues. This obligate myrmecophagy has arisen at least twelve separate times in the last 66 million years, providing a clear example of convergent evolution. Researchers identified obligate myrmecophages by reviewing nearly a century of natural history literature and conservation reports. The compiled dataset covered 4,099 living mammal species and enabled classification of species into dietary categories to determine the frequency and timing of ant- and termite-specialist origins.
Yet over the past 66 million years, mammals across the globe have repeatedly gone down this path-not once or twice, but at least a dozen times. From anteaters and aardvarks to pangolins and aardwolves, the so-called myrmecophages (animals that feed on ants and termites) have evolved similar traits: they've lost most or all of their teeth, grown long sticky tongues, and learned to consume insects by the tens to hundreds of thousands each day.
To figure out how often and when mammals evolved a taste for ants and termites, the study authors first had to track down which species are truly "obligate myrmecophages"-animals that rely entirely on ants and termites, with little to no other food in their diet. That meant going through nearly a century's worth of information. "We looked through a very large number of published natural history papers, zoological texts, and conservation reports as a baseline for identification," Vida added.
Collection
[
|
...
]