Abstract
Nucleotide sequences of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) depict the process of molecular evolution and speciation in animals. A dataset of about twenty three thousand sequences of 2 genes, Cyt-b and Co-1, among different species was analyzed at 5 taxa ranks across the Animal Kingdom. The results support the prevalence of a geographic or allopatric speciation and suggest that Darwin’s gradual evolution in animals also prevails at the molecular level. The approach suggested allows recognize the geographic and other speciation modes, using the set theory equations and genetic terms as their components. The suggested approach may solve a key problem of the Biological Species Concept, i.e. the inability of evolutionary studies to monitor the reproductive isolation among species in nature, by defining a species rank with measurable estimates of genetic parameters.
Highlights
Nucleotide diversity (p-distance and relevant measurements) among individuals, which was reviewed recently in different animal taxa [1,2,3], as well as in plants, fungi, and sponges, provide theoretical and empirical background for further development in molecular phylogenetics and DNA barcoding
There is an active discussion on the theme [1,2,3,4,5] and it is obvious that species identification is not a trivial task because the species notion is complicated and has not been quantitatively defined in modern biology and evolutionary genetics [2,4]
Misled by the vast opportunities of phylogenetic reconstructions inferred from the DNA sequences, some authors even reject the analysis of the current generation dynamics and divergence, opposing the Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC) to the Biological Species Concept (BSC) [8,9]
Summary
Nucleotide diversity (p-distance and relevant measurements) among individuals, which was reviewed recently in different animal taxa [1,2,3], as well as in plants, fungi, and sponges, provide theoretical and empirical background for further development in molecular phylogenetics and DNA barcoding. Main objective of this paper is to annotate the levels of nucleotide diversity in animal populations and higher taxa (jointly considered as 5 comparison groups) using the published data.
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