Comparative mitochondrial genomics of snakes: extraordinary substitution rate dynamics and functionality of the duplicate control region

Zhi J Jiang^{* 1,2} , Todd A Castoe^{* 3,4} , Christopher C Austin⁵ , Frank T Burbrink^1,6 , Matthew D Herron^3,7 , Jimmy A McGuire^5,8 , Christopher L Parkinson³ and David D Pollock⁹

¹Department of Biological Sciences, Biological Computation and Visualization Center, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

²Computational Biology, Scripps Florida, Jupiter, FL, USA

³Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

⁴Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Aurora, CO, USA

⁵Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

⁶Department of Biology, City University of New York, Staten Island, USA

⁷Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

⁸Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

⁹Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Aurora, CO, USA