MCFADDEN, C.S.*; TULLIS, I.; HUTCHINSON, M.B.; WINNER, K.: Rates of Evolution of Cnidarian Mitochondrial Genes

Molecular phylogenetic and phylogeographic studies of cnidarians have been hampered by the apparently slow rate of mitochondrial gene evolution in this group. Genes such as COI, routinely used for population-level studies of other invertebrates, are often virtually invariant among congeneric species of cnidarians. Nuclear rDNA sequences such as ITS, on the other hand, often evolve too rapidly to resolve the relationships of congeners. We have developed PCR primers to amplify several regions of the soft coral mitochondrial genome (including ND2, ND6 and control regions) that may provide more phylogenetic resolution among species and genera than either ITS or COI. We have used these three mtDNA sequences to reconstruct the phylogeny of several genera in the soft coral family Alcyoniidae, and compare the rates of evolution and number of parsimony-informative characters in each region relative to COI and ITS.