Low support values and lack of reproducibility of molecular phylogenetic analysis of Copepoda orders

Abstract Reanalysis of the dataset used by Khodami et al. (2017) reveals low support values for the key nodes of the copepod (Crustacea) phylogeny and fails to reproduce the results obtained in the study. Maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian analyses with the dataset produce phylogenies that are inconsistent with the branching of copepod groups proposed by Khodami et al. (2017). The proposed phylogeny is refuted by the approximately unbiased (AU) statistical test, which undermines several conclusions drawn from the original study.