Galidiinae
| Galidiinae | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Ring-tailed mongoose (Galidia elegans) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Eupleridae |
| Subfamily: |
Galidiinae Gray, 1865 |
| Genera | |
 |
|
| Galidiinae diversity | |
Galidia
Galidictis
Mungotictis
Salanoia
Galidiinae is a subfamily of carnivorans that is restricted to Madagascar and includes six species classified into four genera. Together with the three other species of indigenous Malagasy carnivorans, including the fossa, they are currently classified in the family Eupleridae within the suborder Feliformia. Galidiinae are the smallest of the Malagasy carnivorans, generally weighing about 600 to 900 g. They are agile, short-legged animals with long, bushy tails.
In some of these characters, they resemble the mongooses (family Herpestidae) of continental Africa and southern Eurasia, with which they were classified until 2006, and accordingly they are said to be "mongoose-like" or even described as "Malagasy mongooses".
The relationship of galidiines to other carnivorans has historically been controversial. Up to the middle of the 20th century, all smaller feliformians, including members of the current families Viverridae, Herpestidae, and Eupleridae as well as some smaller groups, were classified in the single family Viverridae. Galidiines, which share some characters with both the civets and genets (current Viverridae) and the mongooses (Herpestidae), were allied early on both with the former and the latter, with some going as far as to doubt that they should be placed in a different subfamily than the other mongooses.
When the classification of the mongooses as a family separate from Viverridae gained wide acceptance around 1990, the galidiines were classified with them in the family Herpestidae, an arrangement supported by cladistic analysis of morphological data. In the early 2000s, molecular phylogenetic inferences, based on data from several genes, provided evidence for a close relationship between galidiines and other Malagasy carnivorans to the exclusion of mainland feliformians. Accordingly, they were all reclassified into a single family, Eupleridae, which is most closely related to the mongooses of the family Herpestidae.
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Wikipedia