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Message: <blockquote data-quote="l_raty" data-source="post: 1360116" data-attributes="member: 24811">There are two issues here.One is that this is a gene tree, not a taxon tree, and the taxon tree could be different. It would be vastly better to have this tree complemented with nuclear data, preferably from a few different genes, to see if these show a congruent pattern. With mtDNA only, the conclusion cannot go beyond the fact that the mtDNA of carolinensis may not be the closest relative of the mtDNA of crecca.The other is that the tree offers no measure of support, so we cannot know to which extent the branching pattern is solid. However:- This tree shows that the mtDNA of most American A. (crecca), most Eurasian A. (crecca), and most Argentinian A. flavirostris segregate into three distinct clusters (note the single Russian sample among the American samples, though - but of course we don't know how this bird looked).- There are published analyses, based on other mtDNA genes (cyt-b and ND2; e.g. <a href="http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v116n03/p0792-p0805.pdf" target="_blank">http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v116n03/p0792-p0805.pdf</a>), that included much fewer birds but showed exactly the same branching pattern, and in these analyses the branching pattern was strongly supported.Considering these two sources of evidence together, I think it is rather safe to say that the branching pattern, as you see it in the barcode tree, must be solid.Laurent -</blockquote>