title: Phylogeny and evolution of  Cervidae based on complete mitochondrial genomes.
abstract: Mitochondrial  DNA sequences can be used to estimate phylogenetic relationships among animal  taxa and for molecular phylogenetic evolution analysis. With the development of  sequencing technology, more and more mitochondrial sequences have been made  available in public databases, including whole mitochondrial DNA sequences.  These data have been used for phylogenetic analysis of animal species, and for  studies of evolutionary processes. We made phylogenetic analyses of 19 species  of Cervidae, with Bos taurus as the outgroup. We used neighbor joining,  maximum likelihood, maximum parsimony, and Bayesian inference methods on whole  mitochondrial genome sequences. The consensus phylogenetic trees supported  monophyly of the family Cervidae; it was divided into two subfamilies,  Plesiometacarpalia and Telemetacarpalia, and four tribes, Cervinae,  Muntiacinae, Hydropotinae, and Odocoileinae. The divergence times in these  families were estimated by phylogenetic analysis using the Bayesian method with  a relaxed molecular clock method; the results were consistent with those of  previous studies. We concluded that the evolutionary structure of the family  Cervidae can be reconstructed by phylogenetic analysis based on whole  mitochondrial genomes; this method could be used broadly in phylogenetic  evolutionary analysis of animal taxa.
authors.affiliation: College of Wildlife Resources, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China.
authors.forename: W-Q
authors.initials: WQ
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: M-H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003670:Deer / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D054629:Genome, Mitochondrial; D010802:Phylogeny