DETTAI, A.; CHEN, W.-J.; BONILLO, C.; LECOINTRE, G.; MNHN, Paris; Univ. Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln; MNHN, Paris; MNHN, Paris: New clades within the acanthomorph “radiation” from taxonomic congruence among nuclear and mitochondrial genes

In the last two years, decisive steps have been made in favor of a resolution of the famous &laquo bush at the top&raquo of the teleostean tree, that includes several large and diverse assemblages of true spiny fishes (Acanthomorpha) and comprises more than 60 % of &laquo fish&raquo species. To investigate acanthomorph interrelationships, we are working on the separate and combined analyses of several independent molecular datasets for a large number of taxa (more than 90). The separate analyses allow a comparison of the resulting trees, identify the groups found in several or all of the datasets: those are considered to be probably due to the common phylogenetic signal. The groups obtained for only one dataset are dismissed (at least provisionally, until more information can be gathered) as results of the biases peculiar to that dataset. The results for mitochondrial ribosomal genes 12S and 16S, partial 28S nuclear ribosomal gene and the nuclear gene encoding rhodopsin have been presented before, but 1100 bp of the nuclear gene MLL (mixed-lineage leukemia like) have been obtained, adding a new dataset, and more important, adding new recurrent (henceforth considered as reliable) clades and confirming others. These clades can be proposed for future research in morphology and/or molecular phylogenetics of acanthomorphs.