Reply to Triant D and DeWoody J: Integrating numt pseudogenes into mitochondrial phylogenies: comment on Mitochondrial phylogeny of Arvicolinae using comprehensive taxonomic sampling yields new insights

Abstract

Triant and DeWoody (2009) used our assessment of the phylogenetic relations within the subfamily Arvicolinae (Buzan et al., 2008) to highlight the discrepancies caused by inadvertently integrating nuclear copies of mitochondrial genes (numt) into mitochondrial phylogenies. In particular, they referred to twelve numt sequences previously published by Triant & DeWoody (2008), which our publication purportedly included. Our phylogenetic tree also differed from that reconstructed by Triant & DeWoody (2008) based upon our reported sequences, thus requiring clarification. The apparent discrepancy is due to the fact that some of the GenBank accession numbers listed in table 1 of Buzan et al. (2008: 827–828) are incorrect. The original and corrected data are now given here in Table 1. Despite the incorrect entries in the previous table 1, the phylogenetic reconstruction presented in our original study did not include any numt sequences, and thus our reported conclusions (Buzan et al., 2008: 829–832) are still valid if the correct sequences are used. The authors apologize for the errors, and thank Deborah A. Triant and J. Andrew DeWoody for drawing our attention to them.