Cephinae is traditionally divided into three tribes and about 24 genera based on morphology and host utilization. There has been no study testing the monophyly of taxa under a strict phylogenetic criterion. A molecular phylogeny of Cephinae based on a total of 68 sequences of mtDNA COI gene, representing seven genera of Cephinae, is reconstructed to test the traditional limits and relationships...

Partial 18S rRNA sequences of five chelicerate arthropods plus a crustacean, myriapod, insect, chordate, echinoderm, annelid, and platyhelminth were compared. The sequence data were used to infer phylogeny by using a maximum-parsimony method, an evolutionary-distance method, and the evolutionary-parsimony method. The phylogenetic inferences generated by maximum-parsimony and distance methods su...

Molecular investigations of deep-level relationships within and among the animal phyla have been hampered by a lack of slowly evolving genes that are amenable to study by molecular systematists. To provide new data for use in deep-level metazoan phylogenetic studies, primers were developed to amplify a 1.3-kb region of the alpha subunit of the nuclear-encoded sodium-potassium ATPase gene from 3...

Twenty-nine populations of Xiphophorus fishes representing nine species of northern swordtails, one southern swordtail and a platyfish were assayed electrophoretically for allozyme variation. Phylogenetic relationships were inferred using parsimony and likeUhood analysis of gene frequency characters, as well as Fitch-Margoliash, minimum evolution and neighbor-joining analyses of genetic distanc...

A phylogenetic estimation of the temperate Gondwanan mite harvestman family Pettalidae (Arachnida, Opiliones, Cyphophthalmi) was conducted using 143 morphological variables (59 raw and 84 scaled measurements) from 37 ingroup and 15 outgroup terminals. We used custom algorithms to do pairwise comparisons between characters and identify sets of dependent characters, which were collapsed using pri...

Phylogenetic relationships among genera of tribe Malveae (Malvaceae, subfamily Malvoideae) were reconstructed using sequences of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the 18S-26S nuclear ribosomal repeat. Newly generated sequences were combined with those available from previous generic level studies to assess the current circumscription of the tribe, monophyly of some of the larger g...

Hexapoda includes 33 commonly recognized orders, most of them insects. Ongoing controversy concerns the grouping of Protura and Collembola as a taxon Ellipura, the monophyly of Diplura, a single or multiple origins of entognathy, and the monophyly or paraphyly of the silverfish (Lepidotrichidae and Zygentoma s.s.) with respect to other dicondylous insects. Here we analyze relationships among ba...

Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) represent one of the most diverse animals groups. Yet, the phylogeny of advanced ditrysian Lepidoptera, accounting for about 99 per cent of lepidopteran species, has remained largely unresolved. We report a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of lepidopteran affinities. We performed phylogenetic analyses of 350 taxa representing nearly 90 per cent of lepidopt...