New patellogastropod mitogenomes help counteracting long-branch attraction in the deep phylogeny of gastropod mollusks

Long-branch attraction (LBA) is a well-known artifact in phylogenetic reconstruction. Sparse taxon sampling and extreme heterogeneity of evolutionary rates among lineages generate propitious situations for LBA, even defying probabilistic methods of phylogenetic inference. A clear example illustrating LBA challenges is the difficulty of reconstructing the deep gastropod phylogeny, particularly using mitochondrial (mt) genomes. Previous studies...