Performance of intron 7 of the -fibrinogen gene for phylogenetic analysis: An example using gladiator frogs, Gray, 1825 (Anura, Hylidae, Cophomantinae).

, the third largest genus of Hylinae, has cryptic morphological species. The potential applicability of is explored to propose a robust phylogeny of . The phylogenetic potential of was evaluated using maximum parsimony, MrBayes, and maximum likelihood analysis. Comparison of polymorphic sites and topologies obtained with concatenated analysis of and other nuclear genes (, , , , , and ) allowed evaluation of the phylogenetic signal of . Mean evolutionary rates were calculated using the sequences of the mitochondrial genes and available for in GenBank. Dating of and some of its groups was performed using the RelTime method with secondary calibration. analysis revealed high values at informative sites for parsimony. The absolute values of the mean evolutionary rate were higher for mitochondrial genes than for . Dating of congruent groups for , , and revealed closer values between mitochondrial genes and slightly different values from those of . Divergence times of basal groups tended to be overestimated when mtDNA was used and were more accurate when nDNA was used. Although there is evidence of phylogenetic potential arising from concatenation of specific genes, provides well-resolved independent gene trees. These results lead to a paradigm for linking data in phylogenomics that focuses on the uniqueness of species histories and ignores the multiplicities of individual gene histories.