Meeting Abstract

P2.99  Tuesday, Jan. 5  Phylogeny of Pacific Brooding Anemones in Epiactis (Actiniaria, Actiniidae). LARSON, Paul G*; FRANCIS, Lisbeth; The Ohio State University, Columbus larson.309@buckeyemail.osu.edu

Sea anemones in the genus Epiactis (Verrill, 1869) brood their offspring. Reproductive strategies in Epiactis are varied, including internal and external brooding, hermaphroditism, and gonochorism. This is a cosmopolitan genus that broods in arctic, Antarctic, and temperate waters. On the Pacific coast of the United States, four species of Epiactis exhibit the possible combinations of the reproductive traits mentioned above. Previous phylogenetic work done on only these four species using allozyme and DNA fingerprinting data found the group to be paraphyletic and was unable to make inferences about the evolution of these characters based on the tree topology. Increased taxonomic sampling and incorporation of other types of data should offer the resolution necessary for illuminating the evolutionary relationships between species and their respective reproductive modes. This study of diversity and phylogeny of Epiactis uses nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence data in a phylogenetic analysis and includes other brooding species thought to be closely related to Epiactis in an effort to better understand the evolution of this behavior.