Molecular phylogeny of the tribe Sphodrini (Coleoptera: Carabidae) based on mitochondrial and nuclear markers

A phylogenetic analysis of 6.4 kb of nucleotide sequence data from seven genes (mitochondrial cox1-cox2 and tRNAleu, and nuclear Ef-1α C0, Ef-1α C1, 28S, and 18S) was done to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of the ground-beetle tribe Sphodrini. Gene regions of variable nucleotide length were aligned using both a secondary structure model, Clustal W, and a combination of the two. Sensitivity analysis was performed in order to explore the effect of alignment methods. The ribosomal and protein-coding genes were largely congruent based on the ILD test and partitioned Bremer support measures. MtDNA analysis provided high resolution and high support for most clades. The tribe Sphodrini and the related tribes Platynini, Pterostichini and Zabrini made up monophyletic clades, but the relationship between them was weakly resolved and sensitive to alignment strategy. Previously suggested relationships between subtribes of Sphodrini were not corroborated, and only the subtribe Atranopsina revealed high support as the sister clade to the other subtribes. The analyses clearly demonstrated the importance of exploring effects of alignment methods that may become particularly important in resolving polytomies and nodes with low support.