A TEST OF ARCHONTA MONOPHYLY AND THE PHYLOGENETIC UTILITY OF THE MITOCHONDRIAL GENE 12S RIBOSOMAL-RNA

The relationships within the superorder Archonta, which contains the o rders Dermoptera (flying lemurs), Scandentia (tree shrews), Chiroptera (bats), and Primates, were examined through the analysis of five newl y derived and complete mitochondrial 12S; rRNA sequences. The new data is combined with 83 additional known mammalian sequences to provide a full phylogenetic sampling. Phylogenetic hypotheses are generated usi ng PAUP 3.1.1 (Swofford [1993] Illinois Natural History Survey,Champai gn, IL) through analyses of all characters equally weighted, transvers ions only, and the effect of alignment gaps on phylogeny. The Parsimon y Jackknifer (Farris et al. [1996] Cladistics 12:99-124) was used to a ssess the level of ambiguity present in the sequence data, and therefo re the strength of the tee topologies. The conclusions of Springer and Douzery (1996, J. Mel. Evol. 43:357-373) which states that 12S rRNA i s reliable to a time depth of 100 mya is unsupported by these analyses . The usefulness of 12S rRNA to aid in solving Archonta relationships and others of similar time depth is found to be suspect. (C) 1998 Wile y-Liss, Inc.