Fig. 1

World cladogram built with complete mtDNA of known haplotypes (for color see online version). Tree was built with Mr. Bayes (Huelsenbeck and Ronquist 2001), GTR+I+G model, five million generations, and visualized in MacClade 4.0 (Maddison and Maddison WP. MacClade 4: analysis of phylogeny and character evolution. Version 4.08a. http://macclade.org2005). Students and professors that were successfully assigned to haplotypes (70% of sequences clustered to a known haplotype with a posterior probability higher than 65%) are plotted as dots on tips corresponding to their mtDNA haplotypes. A simplified migration map (inset) shows the likely path of migration and origin of main haplotypes. This figure has great educational value, helping students understand how phylogenetic data can be used to reconstruct migration patterns (ancestral haplotypes of African origin and out-of-Africa migrations, low genetic diversity in Americas indicating recent colonization). Major events in human evolution are shown in arrow, but the tree is not to scale. Data in Nexus format used to build this tree can be found in supplementary materials (ESM 4) and accession number in supplementary materials Table 1