A Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeny of Extant Species of the GenusTrachemyswith Resulting Taxonomic Implications

The phylogenetic relationships among taxa within the emydid genus Trachemys have largely remained unresolved. A 768-basepair fragment of ND4, as well as the histidine, serine, and leucine tRNAs were sequenced from 18 of 26 of the extant species and subspecies of Trachemys. The aligned sequences were analyzed using maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian methods. The results support the taxonomy of the genus as proposed by Seidel.