40-7 Sat Jan 2 Morphological based relationships of the Molidae family supported by molecular phylogeny and 3D geometric morphometrics Biondi, AA*; Kellogg, JE; Ruane, S; Amplo, HE; Crawford, CH; Flammang, BE; New Jersey Institute of Technology; Rutgers University; Rutgers University; Rutgers University; New Jersey Institute of Technology; New Jersey Institute of Technology aab53@njit.edu
The Molidae family (Order: Tetraodontiformes) is comprised of 3 genera and 5 species which have record-breaking developmental growth. To analyze the relationships among the Molidae family throughout ontogeny, we created a molecular phylogeny and used 3D geometric morphometrics. We used Mitochondrial D-Loop DNA collected from the GenBank® database. The reconstructed tree shows over 98% nodal support for each species (69 Masturus lanceolatus, 46 Mola alexandrini, 21 Mola mola, 23 Mola tecta, 1 Ranzania laevis, and 61 pufferfish, (Tetraodon nigroviridis as the outgroup) present in this analysis. We collected ontogenetic series of Mola mola, Masturus lanceolatus, and Ranzania laevis from museum collections to investigate the morphological characteristics of each genera throughout development. Using a combination of μCT scanning, PTA staining, gross dissection, and quantitative 3D geometric morphometrics, we have been able to compare three species of molids (one of each genus) lending an ontogenetic perspective to the molecular phylogeny.
