Abstract
This study presents evidence of concerted evolution in the mitochondrial control region of the frog Pseudopaludicola canga. Four repeat units of 88 bp (as well as a fifth, incomplete unit) were observed in the 5′ domain, with the duplicated segments of the same specimen being more related to one another than to the equivalent regions in other specimens, as a result of concerted evolution. We highlight that drawing conclusions from phylogeographical analysis using the control region containing VNTRs must be interpreted with caution, because it violated a basic assumption of phylogeny, since the regions cannot be treated as independent characters.
Acknowledgements
We thank Vale S.A., F.D. Martins/ICMBio and Golder Associates Ltd. for logistical support in the field, and we are especially grateful to T. Dornas, A. Castilho, J. Campos and B. Ranieri.
Declaration of interest
The authors are responsible for the content and writing of the paper and report no conflicts of interest. The study was supported by research grants from CAPES and FCT, through research projects MCT/CNPq 14-2010, MCT/CNPq 3-2009, CAPES/FCT 244/09 and PTDC/BIA-BEC/105093/2008, and the Brazilian National Science and Technology Institute (INCT) for Biodiversity and Land Use in the Amazon (CNPq 574008/2008-0). FS was supported by FEDER funds, through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors (COMPETE), and National Funds, through FCT (UID/BIA/50027/2013, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006821, SFRH/BPD/87721/2012). MV receives research fellowships from CNPq. Data Accessibility: GenBank numbers of the sequences: KR046368–KR046407.
Supplementary material available online