FESSLER, JL*; WESTNEAT, MW; Field Museum and Univ. of Illinois at Chicago; Field Museum, Chicago: Phylogenetics and Evolutionary History of the Butterflyfishes (Chaetodontidae)

Marine butterflyfishes (116 sp.) are conspicuously beautiful and abundant animals found on coral reefs worldwide, yet there remains an absence of a well-supported molecular phylogeny. We present a new molecular phylogeny of the butterflyfishes, including representatives of all commonly cited subgenera with the exception of Parachaetodon. The molecular data consists of three genes: two nuclear and one mitochondrial that total 2309 characters. Data were collected for 55 ingroup and 13 outgroup taxa, representing various branches along the perciform tree. Analyses were conducted using parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian inference, and produced a number of well-supported nodes of interest. Our results agree with some features of previous systematic hypotheses, but differ in several notable ways. We organize and test the validity of many of these past hypotheses, particularly for the subgenera of Chaetodon. Finally, we analyzed the biogeography of the butterflyfishes, whose distribution patterns are a combination of circumtropical species and highly restricted endemics. GIS applications were used to organize and analyze attribute data and distributional patterns. Distributional data is largely comprised of specimen locality data collected from museum databases. Polygons were generated from constellations of localities for each species, and organized into GIS layers. Attribute data encompassing a wide variety of butterflyfish characteristics were organized into a linked relational database and sorted to find phylogenetically informative patterns. We incorporated relevant past research on anatomy, ecology, and other traits that were available and conclude that the suite of tools available in GIS applications effectively manages the information needed to understand the evolution and diversification of this group.