Speciation dynamics in the SE Asian tropics: Putting a time perspective on the phylogeny and biogeography of Sundaland tree squirrels, Sundasciurus

Tropical rainforests are well known for their extraordinarily high levels of biodiversity. The origin of this species richness is still debated. For instance, the museum hypothesis states that over evolutionary time more and more species will accumulate with relatively few extinctions. In contrast, the Pleistocene diver- sification model argues that during the last 2 million years, climatic factors (glaciations) caused environ- mental changes that drove isolation and vicariant speciation events. In this study, we construct a molecular phylogeny of the Sundaland (Malay Peninsula, Sumata, Borneo, Palawan) and Greater Minda- nao (Mindanao, Samar, Leyte) tree squirrels (genus Sundasciurus). Our results show that most speciation events in this forest dependent taxon occurred before the Pleistocene and that even the timing of intra- specific splits among populations from different landmasses are relatively old. Additionally, we found unexpectedly high divergence within and between highland populations of S. tenuis on Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, highlighting the importance of Pliocene events in both speciation and within species divergences in this regionPeer reviewe

Nuclear copies of mitochondrial genes: another problem for ancient DNA

The application of ancient DNA techniques is subject to many problems caused primarily by low quality and by low quantity of DNA. For these reasons most studies employing ancient DNA rely on the characterization of mitochondrial DNA, which is present in many more copies per cell than nuclear DNA and hence more copies are likely to survive. We used universal and taxon specific mitochondrial primers to amplify DNA from museum specimens, and found many instances where the amplification of nuclear copies of the mitochondrial gene (numts) instead of the targeted mitochondrial fragment had occurred. Furthermore, the likelihood of amplifying numts increased dramatically when universal primers were utilized. Here we suggest that ancient DNA practitioners must consider the possibility that numts can be amplified at higher rates than previously thought. This is another complication for ancient DNA studies, but it also suggests that more extensive inclusion of nuclear markers in ancient DNA studies should be feasible. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.Peer Reviewe