PHYLOGENETIC DIVERSITY OF SOME SMALL MAMMALS FROM <em>SCIURUDAE</em> FAMILY IN MONGOLIA

Abstract

The squirrel family, Sciuridae, is one of the largest and widespread, ecologically common families of mammals. Due to the conspicuousness of this small mammal group with a big population, insufficient knowledge exists about its phylogenetic relationships. In this study, we identified 14 DNA sequences of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene in 6 species of Sciuridae and these sequences were compared with corresponding published COI gene sequences of the same species in Eurasia and determined their phylogenetic relationships by Neighbor-joining method.

Keywords

• Phylogeny
• Sciuridae
• mtDNA
• cytochrome oxidase I