Molecular Phylogeny and Evolution of Labroid Fishes

小行星9806905 脊椎动物中最大和最多样化的目是“统治鲈鱼”，或鲈形鱼。鲈形亚目的鱼类约占所有活鱼类的15%，包括东太平洋的冲浪鱼，珊瑚礁栖息的豆娘鱼，鹦嘴鱼，濑鱼和着名的慈鲷。 在此之前，这一广泛的物种被放在一起，因为这些鱼在喉咙区域有修改的结构（“修改的咽器”），用于压碎或以其他方式准备食物（猎物）进行消化。 这个组合的绝对多样性阻碍了准确反映这些鱼的历史（进化史）的分类的构建，因此不清楚咽器特征是否标志着一个或多个谱系的存在。 在这项研究中，斯蒂芬·卡尔将使用来自三个独立基因的DNA序列数据来重建唇形科鱼类的系统发育关系，开始将这些鱼类的分类建立在合理的基础上，并确定诸如与咽器相关的形态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，分别出现在几个不同的谱系中，因此只是表面上相似的群体 这项工作应提供一个坚实的基础，正在进行和未来的比较研究的生理和行为，这些众多的，往往是经济上重要的，鱼。

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.