Multi locus phylogeny of arvicoline voles (Arvicolini, Rodentia) shows small tree terrace size

We combined mitochondrial (cyb, control region, coi, nd4) and nuclear (irbp, ghr, sry, kat) DNA sequence data to infer phylogenetic relationships of arvicoline voles. The concatenated supermatrix contained 72.8 % of missing data. From this dataset, Bayesian inference showed close relationships of Arvicola and Chionomys, Proedromys with Lasiopodomys and Microtus gregalis, Phaiomys with Neodon and M clarkei. Genus Microtus formed a supported group with Blanfordimys and N. juldaschi. The gene partition taxon sets were explained in the multilocus phylogeny in such a way that the resulting Bayesian inference tree represented a unique solution on a terrace in the tree space. This means that although the supermatrix contained a large proportion of missing data, it was informative in retrieving a phylogeny with a unique optimality score, tree likelihood.