Meeting Abstract

41.6  Friday, Jan. 4  Decapod phylogeny: What can nuclear protein-coding genes tell us? CHU, K.H.*; TSANG, L.M.; MA, K.Y.; CHAN, T.Y.; The Chinese University of Hong Kong; The Chinese University of Hong Kong; The Chinese University of Hong Kong; National Taiwan Ocean University kahouchu@cuhk.edu.hk

The high diversity of decapods has attracted the interest of carcinologists but there is no consensus on decapod phylogeny in spite of the endeavors using both morphological and molecular approaches. New sources of information are necessary to elucidate the phylogenetic relationships among decapods. Here we demonstrate the applicability of nuclear single copy protein-coding genes in phylogenetic analysis of this group. Using only two protein-coding genes, we have successfully resolved most of the infraordinal relationships with high bootstrap support, indicating the superior efficiency of these markers compared to nuclear ribosomal DNA and mitochondrial DNA markers commonly used in phylogenetic reconstruction of decapods. Apparently these two types of markers suffer from the problems of alignment ambiguities and rapid saturation, respectively. We have also applied the nuclear protein-coding genes in revealing interfamilial and intergeneric evolutionary history. Trees with robust support can be obtained using sequences of two to four genes for all the major infraorders and families tested including the most speciose Brachyura and Caridea. Thus, these nuclear single copy protein-coding genes are applicable to various taxonomic levels and we believe that they will provide valuable new source of information in reconstructing the tree of life of Decapoda.