Meeting Abstract
Parborlasia corrugatus is a large dioecious, broadcast spawning heteronemertean found in marine systems at higher southern latitudes from the intertidal to 3950 m in depth. Like other nemerteans, P. corrugatus has limited external morphology but can display a range of color variation. Additionally, there are at least two populations of P. corrugatus with one on the Antarctic continental shelf and one on the South American shelf. Despite having pelagic larvae, these populations have been reproductively isolated by temperature differences created by the Antarctic Polar Front, an open-ocean barrier to gene flow. Within the 15,499 bp mitochondrial genome, we recovered 13 protein coding genes as well as two rRNA and 22 tRNA. The order of tRNA genes have been relatively conserved across nemertean mitogenomes, except for one inversion of tRNAL1 between tRNAL2 when compared to other heteronemertean taxa. The GC% was 35.9% across the genome. Phylogenetic analyses yielded a topology consist with the current understanding of heteronemertean relationships, however, interestingly, P. corrugatus exhibited a long branch in our analysis.
