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Author Topic:   Congruence between molecular and morphological phylogenies?
Tanypteryx
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Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
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Message 3 of 8 (844028)
11-24-2018 2:31 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by caffeine
11-19-2018 4:27 PM


This is an interesting topic that addresses an aspect of taxonomy that I have discussed with friends and colleagues on countless late nights drinking a few beers at dragonfly meetings and conferences.
When I was young all we had was morphology along with some aspects of life histories as keys to phylogenetic relationships of dragonflies, but we realized that traditional Linnaean hierarchy was not a good description of evolutionary history for most species.
Cladistics gave us a way to describe the evolutionary history of a species or groups of species based on speciation events.
Molecular studies started being published and the technology advanced fairly rapidly. Early in the development of molecular methodology there were often results that disagreed with what we thought we knew from morphology. Sequencing multiple genes allowed better resolution and better confidence in the results.
Recently (2016) some friends of mine published a revision of the genus Gomphus in North america. There are 5 authors, 2 of whom are molecular specialists and 3 of whom are morphological systematists, one who is also a nymph specialist.
Phylogenetic relationships of North American Gomphidae and their close relatives A pdf is available at this site as well as the full text of the paper.
Abstract:
quote:
Intrafamilial relationships among clubtail dragonflies (Gomphidae) have been the subject of many morphological studies, but have not yet been systematically evaluated using molecular data. Here we present the first molecular phylogeny of Gomphidae. We include six of the eight subfamilies previously suggested to be valid, and evaluate generic relationships within them. We have included examples of all genera reported from the Nearctic except Phyllocycla. This sample includes all North American species of Ophiogomphus, which has allowed us to explore intrageneric relationships in that genus. Our particular focus is on the closest relatives of the genus Gomphus, especially those North American species groups that have been commonly treated as subgenera of Gomphus. The Gomphus complex is split into additional genera, supported by molecular and morphological evidence: Phanogomphus, Stenogomphurus, Gomphurus and Hylogomphus are here considered to be valid genera. The genus Gomphus, in our restricted sense, does not occur in the western hemisphere; in addition, G. flavipes is transferred to Stylurus.
Multiple genetic sites were compared for each species.
quote:
We used nuclear and mitochondrial protein coding [histone 3 (H3), and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI)] and ribosomal (12S, 16S, and 28S) primers for amplification.
Collaborations between gene jockies and morphologists makes these studies much more robust.
Sometimes when you see a paper with a string of authors, the assumption is made that some of them may have been subordinate to others. That is not the case here. All five of these authors are considered to be at the top of their field.

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by caffeine, posted 11-19-2018 4:27 PM caffeine has seen this message but not replied

  
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