Molecular phylogeny and divergence times of Malagasy tenrecs: Influence of data partitioning and taxon sampling on dating analyses

Table 4 Posterior estimates of divergence times (Mya ± standard deviation) inferred from the concatenated datasets.

Radiation	Calibration time frame (Mya) ^a	[16]^b	This study without GHR^b	This study^b
Primates	none	79.1 ± 4.7	73.5 ± 4.8	75.5 ± 4.3
Carnivora	50–63	55.6 ± 3.1	54.7 ± 3.0	53.3 ± 2.4
Afroinsectiphillia	none	73.7 ± 4.0	77.3 ± 3.9	76.5 ± 3.6

Bayesian relaxed molecular clock method was used. Ages in bold indicate the study in which the corresponding order was more extensively sampled. The result shows that increasing the sampling size pushes the ages towards older estimates. In this analysis rodents could not be taken into account because of sampling incongruences between the two studies.
^a Paleontological time constraints used as calibrations.
^b The results of MODELTEST were used to define the partitioning; the three studies are therefore directly comparable.

ISSN: 2730-7182