Meeting Abstract

45-6   14:45 - 15:00  Mitochondrial genomes provide insight into interfamilial relationships within Pycnogonida Zehnpfennig, JR*; Varney, RM; Halaynch, KM; Mahon, AR; Central Michigan University; University of California, Santa Barbera; UNC-Wilmington, Center for Marine Sciences; Central Michigan University zehnp1jr@cmich.edu

Sea spiders (Pycnogonida) are a speciose clade with ~1,300 described species that are especially diverse in Antarctica. Evolutionary patterns within the group remain unresolved due to distinctive morphological traits and highly reduced forms among and between the ten putative, extant families. To date, the relationships between pycnogonid clades remain unresolved and a consensus phylogeny of the group is still debated. Previous work has produced contrasting topologies for interrelationships at the family level using various methodologies. To attempt to resolve phylogenetic relationships between major clades of sea spiders, complete mitochondrial genomes from representatives of all ten currently recognized sea spider families were sequenced, assembled, annotated and combined with any available pycnogonid mitogenomes that were previously published. In this study, we present 20 novel mitogenomes that were combined with the seven previously available whole mitogenomes in public databases. We present a familial level phylogeny using mitochondrial gene data, the the results of this study show the order of mitochondrial protein coding genes is consistent between all sea spider families. However, rearrangements in the placement as well as the lengths of the origins of replication vary between families and show large A/T rich regions. Furthermore, we find translocations of a number of tRNA genes in the Callipallenidae, Nymphonidae, and Phoxichillidae families. These data will be used in future studies to expand our knowledge of evolutionary patterns within the Pycnogonida.