BMC Evolutionary Biology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Mitochondrial phylogeography of baboons (Papio spp.) – Indication for introgressive hybridization? Dietmar Zinner*1, Linn F Groeneveld2,3, Christina Keller1,4 and Christian Roos5 Address: 1Cognitive Ethology, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Kellnerweg 4, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany, 2Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Kellnerweg 4, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany, 3Institute of Farm Animal Genetics, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Neustadt, Germany, 4Göttinger Zentrum für Biodiversitätsforschung und Ökologie, Untere Karspüle 2, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany and 5Gene Bank of Primates and Primate Genetics, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Kellnerweg 4, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany Email: Dietmar Zinner* -
[email protected]; Linn F Groeneveld -
[email protected]; Christina Keller -
[email protected]; Christian Roos -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 23 April 2009 Received: 4 July 2008 Accepted: 23 April 2009 BMC Evolutionary Biology 2009, 9:83 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-9-83 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/9/83 © 2009 Zinner et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Baboons of the genus Papio are distributed over wide ranges of Africa and even colonized parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Traditionally, five phenotypically distinct species are recognized, but recent molecular studies were not able to resolve their phylogenetic relationships. Moreover, these studies revealed para- and polyphyletic (hereafter paraphyletic) mitochondrial clades for baboons from eastern Africa, and it was hypothesized that introgressive hybridization might have contributed substantially to their evolutionary history.