Meeting Abstract
P1.33 Thursday, Jan. 3 Molecular phylogenetic analysis of family level relationships among scleractinian corals (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) ROMANO, S.L.*; STAKE, J.L.; BOATENG, C.S.; JNO-BAPTISTE, E.D.; University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas sromano@uvi.edu
The Class Anthozoa is comprised of simple anemone-like animals with a tubular body terminating in a mouth surrounded by tentacles. Within the class, scleractinian corals are one of only two extant orders with a calcium carbonate skeleton. They have an extensive fossil record of 240 million years and are important for establishing relationships within the class. Scleractinian corals are also the foundation of coral reefs, highly diverse ecosystems increasingly threatened due to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Understanding of relationships within the order has been impeded by difficulties in understanding homologies and high levels of variability in the morphological characters that have traditionally been used in scleractinian systematics. Molecular phylogenetic analyses, of seven different nuclear and mitochondrial gene regions, suggest the order has two major sub-groups that diverged early in the evolutionary history of the order. Relationships of genera and families within each of these sub-groups have yet to be clearly resolved with molecular data. We hypothesize that molecular phylogenetic analysis of complete gene regions from a wider sampling of taxa will lead to resolution of groupings within each of these sub-groups. We are analyzing approximately 4600 bp total from the complete nuclear 18S and 28S ribosomal RNA gene regions as well as a part of the mitochondrial 16S ribosomal gene region. Taxa in the analysis include at least one representative of each of the 24 families in the order as well as multiple genera from families that have not formed a monophyletic group in other molecular analyses. This work has been supported by NSF grant EF-0531735 to SLR, as well as NSF EPSCoR grant 0346483 and NIH MBRS RISE grant GM061325 to UVI.
