Eulipotyphla, Waddell, Okada, and Hasegawa, 1999

Mora, José Manuel & Ruedas, Luis A., 2023, Updated list of the mammals of Costa Rica, with notes on recent taxonomic changes, Zootaxa 5357 (4), pp. 451-501 : 455

Eulipotyphla

Insectivora was a name used extensively for a very diverse group of mammals (e.g., Simpson, 1945), and largely derived from Cuvier (1816 [refer to Roux, 1976 for considering 1816 the publication date, rather than 1817]); elephant shrews at the time were considered members of Sorex , and as such included within Cuvier’s “Musaraignes” [= Soricidae ]; e.g., “ Sorex ” proboscideus Shaw 1800). Wagner (1855) expanded Insectivora to include a broad representation of “primitive” insectivorous mammals, a concept followed by Peters (1863), who divided Insectivora into families with a large cecum ( Dermoptera [“ Galeopitheci ”], Scandentia [“ Tupayae ”], and Macroscelidea [“ Macroscelides ”], a group of taxa subsequently included in the suborder Menotyphla by Haeckel [1866]), in contrast to Insectivora with a simple gastrointestinal tract and lacking a cecum ( Tenrecidae [“ Centetina ”, including Solenodon ]; Erinaceidae [“ Erinacei ”]; Talpidae [“ Talpina ”, including Chrysochloridae , the type species of which was described by Linnaeus as Talpa asiatica ]; and Soricidae [“ Sorices ”]). These latter were grouped by Haeckel (1866) at the subordinal level as Lipotyphla. Names for extant taxa used at the suprafamilial level by Simpson (1945; Tenrecoidea; Chrysochloroidea; Erinaceoidea; Macroscelidoidea; Soricoidea) generally were included in morphologically based assessments or phylogenies as “Lipotyphla” (e.g., Novacek 1992; MacPhee & Novacek 1993; Shoshani & McKenna 1998), but represent groups now considered unnatural as a singular coherent order ( Springer et al. 1997, 2003; Stanhope et al. 1998). Some molecular assessments divided Lipotyphla into the unrelated orders Soricomorpha and Erinaceomorpha (e.g., Arnason et al. 2002). However, the diphyly of Soricomorpha and Erinaceomorpha was demonstrated to be a result of a mitochondrial artefact that disappeared when mitochondrial and nuclear data were combined (e.g., Stanhope et al. 1998; Springer et al. 2003; Arnason et al. 2008; dos Reis et al. 2012), with Soricidae and Erinaceidae resolving as sister taxa (e.g., Brace et al. 2016). As a result, contemporary phylogenies (e.g., Bininda-Emonds et al. 2007; Upham et al. 2019) and textbooks ( Vaughan et al. 2015; Feldhamer et al. 2020) alike use Eulipotyphla including the extant families Erinaceidae , Solenodontidae , Soricidae , and Talpidae . Asher & Helgen (2010) nevertheless advocated for the name Lipotyphla as having priority for this group. However, as we indicated above, the Lipotyphla of Haeckel (1866) and that of Asher & Helgen (2010) were somewhat disparate in their contents. We therefore maintain Eulipotyphla Waddell, Okada, and Hasegawa, 1999 for this group.