Morphological and molecular convergences in mammalian phylogenetics

Morphological and molecular convergences in mammalian phylogenetics

Phylogenetic trees reconstructed from molecular sequences are often considered more reliable than those reconstructed from morphological characters, in part because convergent evolution, which confounds phylogenetic reconstruction, is believed to be rarer for molecular sequences than for morphologies. However, neither the validity of this belief nor its underlying cause is known. Here comparing...

Accepting partnership by submission? Morphological phylogenetics in a molecular millennium.

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

The freshwater mussel family Hyriidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia: Unionida) has a disjunct trans-Pacific distribution in Australasia and South America. Previous phylogenetic analyses have estimated the evolutionary relationships of the family and the major infra-familial taxa (Velesunioninae and Hyriinae: Hyridellini in Australia; Hyriinae: Hyriini, Castaliini, and Rhipidodontini in South America), bu...

Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics

We can place more than just organisms into trees: individual genes from the genomes of various organisms can also be placed into trees, and from these gene phylogenies, we can often infer the species phylogenies. Often, this is done with the geological record in mind: not all branches of the tree of life terminate in the present – there are many that end in the various mass extinctions that hav...

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

This study unravels the evolution and biogeographic history of the globally distributed ant genus Crematogaster on the basis of a molecular phylogeny, reconstructed from five nuclear protein-coding genes and a total of 3384 bp of sequence data. A particular emphasis is placed on the evolutionary history of these ants in the Malagasy region. Bayesian and likelihood analyses performed on a datase...