Meeting Abstract

P3.43  Wednesday, Jan. 6  Are modular characters labile in deep-sea bamboo corals? DUEÑAS, L.F.*; SANCHEZ, J.A.; Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia; Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia lf.duenas161@uniandes.edu.co

Character lability has been associated with morphological traits that appear multiple times in the tips of a given phylogeny. Labile traits could confer advantages for adaptation to specific ecological opportunities. Given that shallow-water octocorals exhibit character lability, it is reasonable to expect the same pattern in deep-sea octocorals. Bamboo corals (Octocorallia, Isididae, Keratoisidinae), long-lived deep-sea organisms, are characterized by a noticeable modularity that coined diverse branching morphologies. Ribosomal sequences (16S mtDNA and ITS2 nDNA) were obtained to depict the Keratoisidinae phylogenetic relationships and character lability for some New Zealand bamboo corals. In addition, an ancestral character state reconstruction was accomplished for twelve morphological characters. Keratoisidinae genera were polyphyletic and none of the selected morphological characters exhibited character states forming monophyletic groups in the molecular phylogenies. The lack of monophyly shown by the continuous gains and loses of the character states comprised robust evidence for trait lability in bamboo corals. However, it is possible that these deep-sea octocorals exhibit also phenotypic plasticity associated with continuous characters, given that they can respond to environmental variation. An exploration of the different mechanisms leading to modularity and character evolution, in bamboo corals, is needed. In addition, these findings have a direct impact on Isididae systematics because modular morphological characters are the basis for their taxonomy.