Phylogeny

The family of African mole rats, called Bathyergidae, contain a wide variety of different species, exhibiting very different kinds of behavior.  Most are largely solitary, while others, such as the naked mole rat, live in large social groups. 

The naked mole rat and the Damaraland mole rat are the only two species of Bathyergidae – the only two species of Mammalia, even – that display eusocial behavior. There is a lot of convergent evolution between these two species and eusocial insects such as wasps, bees, and ants (1, 9).

The phylogenetic tree above shows 15 African mole-rat haplotypes and one outgroup species. The numbers beneath the branches indicate branch length. Note the position of Heterocephalus glaber, highlighted in yellow. Highlighting was done by the creators of the webpage and not the originial authors of the paper from which the figure is copied.