| To investigate the origin and diversity of domestic guinea-pigs Cavia porcellus (Linnaeus, 1758; Rodentia, Caviidae), we sequenced the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene of 12 domestic and 10 wild specimens from six species, including the two presumed as ancestral to the domestic one: Cavia tschudii and Cavia aperea. All maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses grouped C. porcellus with C. tschudii (mean K2P distance = 3.2 %); best trees had 609 steps (CI = 0.796; Bremer support Index (SI) = 28), and a _Ln = 4419.52, with 100 % and 97 % bootstrap support respectively. This clade, supported by three substitutions and 96 % bootstrap, is also obtained in the cladistic analysis of corresponding amino acids. When the C. aperea node was forced to join C.... |
