Influence of Alignment on the mtDNA Phylogeny of Cetacea: Questionable Support for a Mysticeti/Physeteroidea Clade
1998; Oxford University Press; Volume: 47; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/106351598260941
ISSN1076-836X
AutoresSalvatore Cerchio, Priscilla K. Tucker,
Tópico(s)Marine and coastal plant biology
ResumoCetacea has traditionally been divided into Odontoceti, the toothed whales, and Mysticeti, the baleen whales. These groups have been considered monophy? letic, although their origins and age have been historically debated. Recently, Mil? inkovitch et al. (1993, 1994) reported a revised phylogeny for Cetacea, based upon phylogenetic analysis of mitochon? drial DNA (mtDNA), that challenges the classical assumption of odontocete mono? phyly. Their phylogenetic hypotheses were based initially on two mitochondrial ribosomal gene segments (930 base pairs [bp] from the 12S and 16S genes) from 16 species of cetaceans, an artiodactyl, and 2 more distantly related outgroup taxa (Milinkovitch et al., 1993), and then from an expanded data set of the ribosomal sequences plus a segment of cytochrome b (for a total of 1,352 bp) from 21 ceta? ceans and 3 artiodactyls (Milinkovitch et al., 1994). In these revised phylogenies, Physeteroidea (the sperm whales) were placed as a sister group to Mysticeti, indi? cating that Physeteroidea are more closely related to Mysticeti than to the other Odontoceti, and inferring paraphyly of the odontocetes. The authors have strongly promoted this hypothesis (Milinkovitch et al., 1993,1994,1995,1996) to the extent of suggesting a complete reinterpretation of cetacean morphologi? cal evolution (Milinkovitch, 1995). The conclusions of Milinkovitch et al.
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