Article history: Received 26 February 2008 Revised 1 August 2008 Accepted 5 August 2008 Available online xxxx

Mitochondrial DNA sequence data from the control region and 12S rRNA in leopard frogs from the Sierra El Aguaje of southern Sonora, Mexico, together with GenBank sequences, were used to infer taxonomic identity and provide phylogenetic hypotheses for relationships with other members of the Rana pipiens complex. We show that frogs from the Sierra El Aguaje belong to the Rana berlandieri subgroup...

Knowledge of phylogeny is of fundamental importance for understanding evolution. It has become an indispensable tool in modern genomics as a framework for interpreting genomes and metagenomes, for understanding the evolution of genes, proteins, and noncoding RNAs, as well as gene regulation by secondary RNA and protein structures, or for reconstructing ancestral genomes [1]. The era of next-gen...

A primary objective of molecular phylogenetics is to use molecular data to elucidate the evolutionary history of living organisms. Dr. Morris Goodman founded the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution as a forum where scientists could further our knowledge about the tree of life, and he recognized that the inference of species trees is a first and fundamental step to addressing many impo...

Since its inception some 50 years ago, phylogenetics has permeated nearly every branch of biology. Initially developed to classify objects based on a set of cladistic rules, it has now become the central paradigm of evolutionary biology and a key framework for making sense of a wide range of disciplines [1], such as genomics [2], community ecology [3], epidemiology [4], conservation biology [5]...

Abstract Molecular methods have revolutionised virtually every area of biology, and metazoan phylogenetics is no exception: molecular phylogenies, clocks, comparative phylogenomics, developmental genetics generated a plethora data spanning numerous taxa collectively transformed our understanding the evolutionary history animals, often corroborating but at times opposing results more traditional...