Paper of the Week: about insect mitochondrial genomes and hexapod evolution
A comparative analysis of complete mitochondrial genomes among Hexapoda
Sabrina Simona, Heike Hadrysa
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (Available online 15 April 2013, In Press)
Highlights
•Overview of current available mitochondrial genome features of Hexapoda is provided.
•The most broad taxon sampling of hexapods has been used to infer hexapod evolution.
•The phylogenetic analyses show the limits of hexapod mt-genome based phylogenies.
•Long-branched problematic orders and/or species are discussed.
•The general conflicts within the mt-genome data are highlighted.
Abstract
... By using the hitherto densest taxon sampling of Hexapoda our analyses resulted in discrepancies to the current phylogenetic hypotheses based on morphological and nuclear data, e.g. monophyly of hexapods and some hexapods orders, e.g. Diptera, Hemiptera and Orthoptera. Nonetheless, compared to previously published studies that strongly support systematically erroneous groups using a sparse taxon sampling, our analyses had no support for theses discrepancies. Consequently, we highly recommend interpreting mt-genome based phylogenies with incomplete representation of major orders/taxa particularly for hexapods with cautions although the inferred relationships are highly supported.