Topic
The use of whole-genome sequence data to reconstruct evolutionary relationships between populations and species and to date when their lineages separated.
Grey Gustafson's team reports that the tiger beetle tribe Manticorini is older than the split of South America from Africa. If the dating holds, the large flightless beetles on both continents were carried apart when the continents separated.
Reality
Researchers led by Odalisca Breedy named a new coral family, Laurinqueidae, for a yellow octocoral living 360 to 529 meters deep off Costa Rica. That so conspicuous an animal went unclassified shows how thinly described seamount life still is.
Reality
Bat1K researchers' Nature study of 103 genomes and 44 fossils puts the most likely origin of bats in Europe, 65 to 60 million years ago. The same model places powered flight and echolocation near the root of the tree, before modern bat groups began to split.
Reality
Scientists have recognized Bolivia's Leopardus tilcayo as a new tiger cat species, the first new wild cat described in over a century. It is one of five tiger cat species, though what the split means for conservation depends on data the coverage does not include.
Reality
The Bat1K consortium's Nature paper samples every one of the 21 recognised bat families and dates the group to roughly 65 million years ago, with the geography resting on where 44 fossil bats were found.
Reality