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Message: <blockquote data-quote="l_raty" data-source="post: 1314854" data-attributes="member: 24811">I was a bit intrigued by this remark in the report:"Wink et al. (2002. Charadrius 38: 239–245) found no sequence differences between Black-throated and Pacific Loons, and low variation in general among the loons; however, Brown et al. (2008. BMC Biology 6: 6) reported (unexpectedly) that arctica and pacifica are not sister taxa, based on phylogenetic analysis of 4594 bp of mtDNA."(For any interested soul, Wink et al. (2002) can be accessed here: <a href="http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/fak14/ipmb/phazb/pdf-files/2002%20Pdf.Pubwink/26.2002.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/fak14/ipmb/phazb/pdf-files/2002 Pdf.Pubwink/26.2002.pdf</a>, and Brown et al. (2008) is here: <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/6/6" target="_blank">http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/6/6</a>)Had a slightly closer look at the data, and ended up with what follows... The Gavia stellata sequence in Wink et al. 2002, based on what they give in their Tab. 2 (p. 242), is directly contradicted by three congruent cytochrome b sequences deposited in GenBank by three different authors (Stanley & Harrison 1999: AF158250; Slack et al. 2006: NC_007007; Brown et al. 2008: EU166996). These three sequences are significantly more divergent from other Gavia spp. than what Wink et al. suggest (8-9%, vs. 4-5%), thus the "low variation in general among the loons" that they found is almost certainly an underestimation. The Wink et al. "stellata" sequence is fully congruent with one sequence deposited in GenBank, labelled as G. arctica (García-Moreno et al. 2003: AY139635 - this is one of the sequences used by Brown et al.)...L -</blockquote>

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