Modeling nucleotide evolution at the mesoscale: The phylogeny of the Neotropical pitvipers of the Porthidium group (Viperidae : Crotalinae)

    Authors

    T. A. Castoe; M. M. Sasa;C. L. Parkinson

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Mol. Phylogenet. Evol.

    Keywords

    akaike weights; Atropoides; Bayes factors; Cerrophidion; MCMC model; testing; Porthidium; relative Bayes factors; CHAIN MONTE-CARLO; CENTRAL AMERICAN HERPETOFAUNA; RIBOSOMAL; DNA-SEQUENCES; BAYESIAN-INFERENCE; MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD; MOLECULAR; SYSTEMATICS; INFORMATION CRITERION; DATA SETS; SUBSTITUTION; SELECTION; Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Evolutionary Biology; Genetics &; Heredity

    Abstract

    We analyzed the phylogeny of the Neotropical pitvipers within the Porthidium group (including intra-specific through intergeneric relationships) using 1.4 kb of DNA sequences front two mitochondrial protein-coding genes (ND4 and cyt-b). We investigated how Bayesian Markov chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) phylogenetic hypotheses based on this 'mesoscale' datasct were affected by analysis under various complex models of nucleotide evolution that partition models across the dataset. We develop an approach, employing three statistics (Akaike weights, Bayes factors, and relative Bayes factors), for examining the performance of complex models in order to identily the best-fit model for data analysis. Our results Suggest that: (1) model choice may have important practical effects oil phylogenetic Conclusions even for mesoscale datasets, (2) the use of a complex partitioned model did not produce widespread increases or decreases in nodal posterior probability support, and (3) most differences in resolution resulting from model choice were concentrated at deeper nodes. Our phylogenetic estimates of relationships among members of the Porthidium group (genera: A tropoides, Cerrophidion, and Porthidium) resolve the monophyly of the three genera. Bayesian MCMC results suggest that Cerrophidion and Porthidium form a clade that is the sister taxon to Atropoides. In addition to resolving the intra-specific relationships among a majority of Porthidium group taxa, our results highlight phylogeographic patterns across Middle and South America and Suggest that each of the three genera may harbor undescribed species diversity. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

    Volume

    37

    Issue/Number

    3

    Publication Date

    1-1-2005

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    881

    Last Page

    898

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000233658100020

    ISSN

    1055-7903

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