Organization and variation of the mitochondrial DNA control region in ardeidae (Aves: Ciconiiformes) and their phylogenetic relationship

Control region is a non-coding region of mitochondrial genome. to infer the organization and variation of ardeidae mitochondrial dna control region,the control region genes of 20 species were analyzed. all the ardeidae species had duplicate control regions,except four species having only single region. the control region spans the region between the genes for trnaglu - trnaphe in the most ardeidae species. the length of the control region sequences ranged from 1427 bp (ixobrychus flavicollis) to 3871 bp (botaurus stellaris). the average genetic distances among the species varied from 5.39% (between egretta sacra and egretta garzetta) to 41.15% (between egretta sacra and botaurus stellaris). five conserved sequence boxes (f to b) in the domain ii of ardeidae sequences were localized. maximum likelihood method was used to reconstruct the phylogenetic trees based on hky+ g model. the phylogenetic tree grouped members of every genus were grouped into each clade,except the genus gorsachius. our results indicated that the genus gorsachius might not be monophyletic. copyright 2017 zoological society of pakistan.