Molecular Phylogeny and Evolution of Labroid Fishes

[806905]卡尔：脊椎动物中最大和最多样化的一目是“统治栖鱼”，或表演鱼类。表演亚目Labroidei的鱼类约占所有现存鱼类的15%，包括东太平洋的冲浪鱼、礁栖豆娘鱼、鹦嘴鱼、濑鱼和著名的鲷鱼。以前，这些种类繁多的鱼类被归为Labroidei，因为这些鱼的喉咙部位（一种“改良的咽器”）有改良的结构，用于粉碎或以其他方式准备食物（猎物）以供消化。这种组合的绝对多样性阻碍了准确反映这些鱼的历史（系统发育）的分类的构建，因此尚不清楚咽器特征是否表明存在一个或多个谱系。在这项研究中，Stephen Karl将使用来自三个独立基因的DNA序列数据来重建唇形鱼的系统发育关系，开始将这些鱼的分类建立在一个健全的基础上，并确定形态学特征（如与咽器相关的特征）是否出现在一个异常多样化的鱼类谱系中，或者更确切地说，已经单独出现在几个不同的，因此只是表面相似的群体中。这项工作应该为正在进行和未来对这些数量众多且经常具有重要经济意义的鱼类的生理和行为的比较研究提供坚实的基础。

9806905 KARL The largest and most diverse order of vertebrates is the "ruling perches", or perciform fishes. Fishes of the perciform suborder Labroidei comprise about 15% of all living fish and include the eastern Pacific surfperches, reef dwelling damselfishes, parrotfishes, wrasses, and the well-known cichlids. Previously, this wide array of species has been placed together in the Labroidei because these fish have modified structures in the throat region (a "modified pharyngeal apparatus") used to crush or otherwise prepare food items (prey) for digestion. The sheer diversity of this assemblage has hindered the construction of a classification that accurately reflects the history (phylogeny) of these fish, so it is unclear whether the pharyngeal apparatus characters signal the presence of one or many lineages. In this research, Stephen Karl will use DNA sequence data from three separate genes to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of labroid fishes, beginning the process of putting the classification of these fishes on a sound basis, and determining whether morphological features such as those associated with the pharyngeal apparatus appeared in one exceptionally diverse lineage of fishes or, rather, has appeared separately in several different, and hence only superficially similar, groups. The work should provide a firm foundation for ongoing and future comparative studies of the physiology and behavior of these numerous, and frequently economically important, fishes.