As extracted from ethanol-preserved tissue samples working with the SpeedTools Tissue DNA Extraction kit (Biotools, Madrid, Spain). Individuals were sequenced for the following markers: three mitochondrial gene fragments, ribosomal 12S rRNA and 16S rRNA (12S and 16S, respectively), cytochrome b (cytb), and the nuclear gene fragment oocyte maturation element MOS (c-mos). Gene fragments have been amplified and sequenced for each strands making use of published primers (as described in detail by Sm et al. (2015); when the cytb long fragment failed to amplify, we used shorter sequences using the Gludg and Cytb2 primers; Kocher et al., 1989; Palumbi, 1996, respectively).Sequence analysis, phylogenetic analyses and hypothesis testingChromatographs were checked manually, assembled and edited making use of Geneious v.7.1.9 (Biomatter Ltd.). For the c-mos gene fragment, heterozygous positions were identified and coded as outlined by the IUPAC ambiguity codes in both alleles. Coding gene fragments (cytb, c-mos) have been translated into amino acids and no cease codons were observed, suggesting that the sequences had been all functional and had been trimmed to start in the first codon position. DNA sequences had been aligned for every single gene IMR-1 cost independently making use of the on line version of MAFFT v.7 (Katoh Standley, 2013) with default parameters (Auto technique, Gap opening penalty: 1.53, Offset value: 0.0). For the 12S and 16S ribosomal fragments we applied the Q-INS-i method, in which information around the secondary structure from the RNA is deemed. To get rid of poorly aligned positions in the non-protein-coding 12S and 16S we applied Gblocks (Castresana, 2000) with low stringency options (Talavera Castresana, 2007). Inter and intra-specific uncorrected p-distances and also the quantity of variable (V ) and parsimony informative (Pi) internet sites have been calculated in MEGA v.7 (Kumar, Stecher Tamura, 2016) independently for each gene fragment. We analysed the Rhynchocalamus data employing 4 datasets assembled utilizing distinct species-sets (A, B and C) and unique DNA sequences: (i) Species-set A was assembled together with the aim of resolving the phylogenetic position of Rhynchocalamus inside Colubrinae and to acquire dates for some relevant cladogenetic events. Dataset 1 of concatenated mtDNA and nDNA, comprised 82 specimens corresponding to 46 various taxa. Dataset 2, forTamar et al. (2016), PeerJ, DOI 10.7717/peerj.6/calibration only, consisted from the concatenated mtDNA and nDNA with a single representative of each mPTP clade of Rhynchocalamus (see below for data on the mPTP species delimitation analysis). It comprised 48 specimens corresponding to 46 distinct taxa; (ii) species-set B was assembled with the aim of resolving the phylogenetic relationships within Rhynchocalamus. Dataset 3 of concatenated mtDNA and nDNA integrated 36 specimens corresponding to six different taxa (Lytorhynchus was applied to root the tree); (iii) species-set C was assembled with all the aim of evaluating the relationships and species boundaries within Rhynchocalamus. Dataset 4 of mtDNA haplotypes only integrated 28 specimens. Best-fit partitioning schemes and models of PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20008976 molecular evolution had been selected with PartitionFinder v.1.1.1 (Lanfear et al., 2012) making use of the following parameters: branchlengths (linked); models of evolution (beast); model choice (AIC); data blocks (12S and 16S every as a single partition, cytb and c-mos first and second codon positions of each gene as a single partition, along with the third codon positions of every single gene as one more); sea.