Meeting Abstract
87.1 Sunday, Jan. 6 Molecular and Morphological Description of Stomatopod Larvae FELLER, KD*; PORTER, ML; CRONIN, TW; UMBC; University of South Dakota; UMBC kfeller1@umbc.edu
The stomatopod larval phase is adapted for survival in the pelagic environment. Larvae have thus evolved an overall morphology that is separate from the adult, making them difficult to identify since they lack the adult characters used to classify species. The traditional methods of larval species identification have been to either hatch larvae from a known mother or rear larvae through adulthood. The limits of these techniques have resulted in a small and patchy description of larval morphology and species diversity in the stomatopod literature. With the advances and accessibility of molecular techniques, DNA barcoding of the cytochrome oxidase I (CO1) mitochondrial gene has emerged as an adequate solution to the problems associated with larval species identification. We designed degenerative primers based on known stomatopod sequences to amplify an 864 base pair fragment of the CO1 gene. Larval sequences were then aligned with 138 adult reference sequences to construct a maximum-likelihood tree. Larval sequences that were reciprocally monophyletic or had a genetic distance of less than 3% from a reference sequence were regarded as a species. Using these methods, we have positively identified 14 species of stomatopod larvae from collections on the reef platform of Lizard Island Research Station (LIRS, Queensland, Australia). This represents approximately half of the adult species that have been sampled for DNA barcoding at LIRS. We have also sampled 8 species of stomatopod larvae with unknown species identities, suggesting a greater diversity of stomatopod species at LIRS than previously sampled. Based on these data, we have begun morphological descriptions of the last stage larval forms of commonly captured species at this site, including Alima pacifica and Alima orientalis. Continuing research will use barcode data to investigate genetic diversity within and among species.
