Phylogenetic Studies of Sunfishes and Basses, Family Centrarchidae, as Evidenced by Nuclear and Mitochondrial DNA Sequences and Morphological Characteristics

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Title: Phylogenetic Relationships of Sunfishes and Basses, Family Centrarchidae, as evidenced by Mitochondrial DNA sequences and Morphological Characteristics.Mayden and Harris9903794 The Centrarchidae (sunfishes and basses) are a group of 31 species in nine genera found only in North America. This family constitutes a major component of the fish communities in most eastern North American warm-water ecosystems and are highly prized in recreational fisheries and aquaculture. In addition, centrarchids have been the focus of many behavioral, developmental, ecological, evolutionary, functional morphological, genetic and host-parasite coevolution studies. Given the popularity of these fish as model organisms across the disciplines listed above, it is surprising that genealogical relationships among species within the family have received minimal systematic attention, and those hypotheses that have been proposed either did not employ a phylogenetic methodology, were based on questionable character data, or failed to encompass all taxa within the family. In addition, all attempts at phylogenetic reconstruction for centrarchids lack an appropriate outgroup, in part, because phylogenetic relationships within Perciformes remain largely unresolved. Regardless, the existing hypotheses of relationships of these important fishes are confusing. A phylogenetic analysis of centrarchid relationships based on diverse morpholgical data sets by other researchers, and a new data set generated from the present study using mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences will provide an opportunity to establish the monophyly of the family, generate a phylogenetic hypothesis of centrarchid species relationships, and determine the sister-group to the Centrarchidae. In addition, we will re-evaluate the question of the use of ontogenetic information in polarizing and ordering characters. Through separate and combined analyses of data sets that currently exist and against the background of the large DNA sequence data set, a study of character congruence (homoplasy) and taxonomic congruence among these independent data sets also is proposed. These data sets will be used in parsimony analyses to reassess the efficacy of using ontogeny in assessing homology and character polarity, determine the extent to which data sets converge on a single phylogenetic hypothesis, and establish a stable classification for this family, and will be useful in studies of rates of evolution and modes of speciation, biogeography, evolution of functional morphology patterns, behaviors, ecologies, and host-parasite coevolution.