Figure 4

Phylogenetic tree of the green algae growing on sloth hair. Maximum likelihood (ML) phylogenetic analysis of 18S rRNA gene clones representing green algae growing on the hair of five species of sloths (highlighted in grey) and bark of tropical trees, their next closest relatives from the classes Ulvophyceae and Trebouxiophyceae and five species of prasinophytes. The phylogeny shows the best ML tree inferred using the programme GARLI v0.96. Numbers at internal branches are bootstrap values (> 65%; from MP and ME analyses above lines, from NJ and GARLI ML below lines) and are given only at those internal nodes which were also resolved by PAUP ML and Bayesian analyses (with posterior probabilities > 0.95). The strain previously assumed to represent the sloths hair alga, Trichophilus welckeri, is marked in bold. Sequences except those where accession numbers are given are reported for the first time in this study. Clones whose phylogenetic positions have been inferred by adding their sequences to this ML phylogeny in ARB (see text) but which were not used to construct the phylogeny were simply added to the figure (marked by "+"). Additional rRNA gene clones from sloth hair samples and tree bark that were positioned into clades A-C and the Trentepohliales, respectively are listed in Additional file 4. Some branches were compressed into triangles for clarity of the graphic, the sequences which they contain are listed in Additional file 5.