Meeting Abstract

10.6  Jan. 4  Assembling the Protostome Tree of Life: EST Data from Diverse Taxa DUNN, CD*; MATUS, DQ; HEJNOL, A; SEAVER, E; MARTINDALE, MQ; University of Hawaii; University of Hawaii; University of Hawaii; University of Hawaii; University of Hawaii cdunn@hawaii.com

Key nodes in the animal phylogeny have remained unresolved despite the growing availability of datasets with many characters for a small set of taxa (genomic data) and better sampling of a small set of characters across many taxa (traditional molecular phylogenetic studies). Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) provide a relatively inexpensive means of collecting sequence data for many genes. Phylogenomic studies that include EST data have recently improved our understanding of several nodes in the animal phylogeny, but important taxa are still missing from these studies. In order to better resolve the animal phylogeny as a whole and to investigate the placement of important �neglected� taxa we have sequenced 1000-5000 ESTs from a diversity of animals including a bryozoan, phoronid, brachiopod, nemertean, myzostomid, acoel, rotifer, hemichordate, echiuran, sipunculid, and ctenophore. Various strategies for gene orthology assignment are presented along with animal phylogenies based on data from about 150 genes sampled across more than 45 diverse taxa. Implications for the evolution of development and body plans are explored in light of these new data.