Revisiting the Glires concept--phylogenetic analysis of nuclear sequences

Abstract

The so-called Glires hypothesis postulates a sister-group relationship between Rodentia (e.g., rat and mouse) and Lagomorpha (e.g., rabbit). Recent molecular phylogenetic analyses have yielded incongruent results, and either supported or refuted the Glires grouping. In order to study this inconsistency we have reconstructed phylogenetic trees based on data sets of 20 orthologous nuclear protein coding genes (6441 aa, sites) and 12 mitochondrial protein coding genes (3559 aa sites). The size of the nuclear data set is considerably larger than any comparable data set hitherto used to study the Glires concept. Analysis of the nuclear data strongly supported the phylogenetic tree (frog, chicken, ((rat, mouse), (rabbit, (human, (cattle, dog))))), while the mt data could not conclusively resolve the position of rabbit relative to that of human. This result was supported by all methods. Thus, the Glires hypothesis was rejected by this study.