Taxacom: article request (mtDNA and phylogeny)

[John Grehan]

Can anyone access the following (and see abstract below for general
interest)

Schwartz, J. H. 2021. Evolution, systematics, and the unnatural history of
mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA Part A 32: 126-151,.

Abstract
The tenets underlying the use of mtDNA in phylogenetic and systematic
analyses are strict maternal inheritance, clonality, homoplasmy, and
difference due to mutation: that is, there are species-specific mtDNA
sequences and phylogenetic reconstruction is a matter of comparing these
sequences and inferring closeness of relatedness from the degree of
sequence similarity. Yet, how mtDNA behavior became so defined is
mysterious. Even though early studies of fertilization demonstrated for
most animals that not only the head, but the sperm’s tail and
mitochondria-bearing midpiece penetrate the egg, the opposite – only the
head enters the egg – became fact, and mtDNA conceived as maternally
transmitted. When midpiece/tail penetration was realized as true, the
conceptions ‘strict maternal inheritance’, etc., and their application to
evolutionary endeavors, did not change. Yet there is mounting evidence of
paternal mtDNA transmission, paternal and maternal combination,
intracellular recombination, and intra- and intercellular heteroplasmy.
Clearly, these phenomena impact the systematic and phylogenetic analysis of
mtDNA sequences.