Not to derail your discovery, but this could be a case of convergent evolution, where distantly related organisms evolve similar traits independently. The fact that these animals are so different yet share something like this in common is a no starter for me... why choose these animals in the first place? Wish I could look into this further, but currently on vacation, so I can't dig any deeper
i considered convergence as seen in the original post, again seeing as how the endotherms cluster together, it mightve independently evolved due to similair metabolic needs. As for why i chose these animals specifically, i wanted to mess around with mitochondrial data to see the monophyly of archosauria for myself because i am currently looking into pseudosuchian diversity and evolution. The elephant was just supposed to be an outgroup to root the 3 diapsids with
Not to derail your discovery, but this could be a case of convergent evolution, where distantly related organisms evolve similar traits independently. The fact that these animals are so different yet share something like this in common is a no starter for me... why choose these animals in the first place? Wish I could look into this further, but currently on vacation, so I can't dig any deeper
i considered convergence as seen in the original post, again seeing as how the endotherms cluster together, it mightve independently evolved due to similair metabolic needs. As for why i chose these animals specifically, i wanted to mess around with mitochondrial data to see the monophyly of archosauria for myself because i am currently looking into pseudosuchian diversity and evolution. The elephant was just supposed to be an outgroup to root the 3 diapsids with
also the whole point of the excersise to me was to find out what trait(s) the transcripting factor codes for specifically to see what traits these animals converged upon or wether increased selective pressures in eg the crocodiles lead to elevated evolutionary rates in that lineage as opposed to the 3 others etc