Meeting Abstract
The phylogenetic relationships of certain paedomorphic members of the Cypriniformes (specifically the genera Paedocypris, Danionella, Sundadanio) have been challenging to infer. These three paedomorphic genera all have a miniature body size and share the loss of numerous bones; morphological study suggests that these paedomorphic taxa form a single clade. On the other hand, multiple molecular studies have presented conflicting relationships with high support; molecular phylogenetic studies that included mitochondrial sequences unite Paedocypris and Sundadanio as sister genera, while a study that included only nuclear loci place these three genera in disparate parts of the phylogeny. To address this difficult phylogenetic problem, we utilized Anchored Phylogenomics sequence capture to enrich 393 loci in these fishes and other Cypriniformes for a phylogenomic-scale study. Our analysis revealed that Paedocypris, Danionella, and Sundadanio do not form a clade, and thus paedomorphism evolved multiple times within the Cypriniformes.
