title: Geographic origin of human mitochondrial DNA: accommodating phylogenetic uncertainty and model comparison.
abstract: Many biogeographic problems are tested on phylogenetic trees. Typically, the uncertainty in the phylogeny is not accommodated when investigating the biogeography of the organisms. Here we present a method that accommodates uncertainty in the phylogenetic trees. Moreover, we describe a simple method for examining the support for competing biogeographic scenarios. We illustrate the method using mitochondrial DNA sequences sampled from modern humans. The geographic origin of modern human mtDNA is inferred to be in Africa, although support for this hypothesis was ambiguous for data from an early paper.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA. johnh@brahms.biology.rochester.edu
authors.forename: John P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Huelsenbeck
authors.forename: Nikita S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Imennov
mesh_terms: D000349:Africa; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010802:Phylogeny
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial