Meeting Abstract

67.7  Saturday, Jan. 5  Using sequence capture of UCEs and flanking regions to resolve phylogenetic relationships within actinopterygian fishes ALFARO, ME*; FAIRCLOTH, BC; UCLA; UCLA michaelalfaro@ucla.edu

Ray-finned fishes constitute the dominant radiation of vertebrates with over 30,000 species. Although molecular phylogenetics has begun to disentangle major evolutionary relationships within this vast section of the tree of life there is as yet no widely available approach for efficiently collecting phylogenomic data within fishes, leaving much of the enormous potential of massively parallel sequencing technologies for resolving major radiations in ray-finned fishes unrealized. Here we provide a genomic perspective on longstanding questions regarding the diversification of major groups of ray-finned fishes through targeted enrichment of ultra-conserved nuclear DNA elements (UCEs) and their flanking sequence. Our workflow efficiently and economically generate data sets that are orders of magnitude larger than those produced by traditional approaches. Analysis of the UCE data set recovers a well-supported phylogeny at both shallow and deep time-scales that supports a monophyletic relationship between Amia and gar (Holostei) and reveals elopomorphs and then osteoglossomorphs to be the earliest diverging teleost lineages. We also discuss progress towards developing larger marker sets for major actinopterygian radiations as well as some of the challenges to traditional phylogenetic workflows created by large UCE-based data sets.