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PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS OF ELAPHODUS CEPHALOPHUS AND THREE MUNTIACUS SPECIES REVEALED BY MITOCHONDRIAL CYTOCHROME B NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCE

2002; Linguagem: Inglês

0001-7302

Cao Xiang,

Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies

Phylogenetic relationships of Mutiacinae are of considerable interest because of their suitability for the study of evolutionary patterns and processes.The extant species of Mutiacinae includes Muntiacus muntjak,Muntiacus reeves,Muntiacus crinifrons,Muntiacus feae,Muntiacus rooseveltorum,Muntiacus gongshanensis and Elaphodus cephalophus.Previous phylogenetic studies on morphological and palontological information for the Mutiacinae have demonstrated that the extant subfamilies of muntjak originated in Pleistocene.The earlist fossil record of Muntiacus reeves shows that this species evolved in early and mid-Pleistocence,while Muntiacus muntjak evolved in mid- and late- Pleistocence.Elaphodus cephalophus is a sister group to the Muntiacus which envolved in Pleistocence too.Most chromosomes of the Elaphodus cephalophus have similar characteristics with Muntiacus reeves except that 2～3 chromosomes are homologous with Muntiacus muntjak.Evolutionary relationships among them are not well understood.Mitochondrial DNA has been used extensively for phylogenetic inference.In this study,fragments of mitochondrial DNA cytochrome b gene(each 366 base pairs in length) have been characterized from Muntiacus muntjak,Muntiacus reeves,Muntiacus crinifrons and Elaphodus cephalophus by direct sequencing of PCR products.The nuclearted divergence of the cytochrome b region was 3.55%～4.64% among three species of Muntiacus , and 9.29%～10.11% between Elaphodus and three species of Muntiacus.These results showed that divergence time was about 1.42～1.84 million years among three species of Muntiacus and Elaphodus diverged from Muntiacus about 3.7 million years ago.These results indicated that nuclearted divergency was level of inter-subfamily between Elaphodus cephalophus and Muntiacus. We obtained homologous nuclear sequence of Cervus nippon(Cervinae),Hydropotes inermis(Hydropotinae) and Alces alces(Odocoileinae) as well as Tragelaphus scriptus(Tragulidae) for outgroup from gene bank.The phylogenetic relationship of mitochondrial DNA of seven species of Cervidae was described.Phylogenetic trees were constructed with neighbor-joining method and maximum parsimony method.Results indicated that Muntiacus muntjak,Muntiacus reeves and Muntiacus crinifrons construted a monophyletic group.The phylogenetic relationships of mitochondrial DNA suggested that Elaphodus cephalophus be more closely related with Muntiacus than other three species of subfamilies.These results are consistent with previous phylogenetic studies of mitochondrial DNA on the whole.