PEET: Phylogenetic Systematics of Dorid Nudibranchs

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Gosliner 9978155Sea slugs (nudibranchs) are colorful marine snails most commonly found in tropical oceans. Most of these animals have lost the protective shell found in other types of snails. In order to defend themselves, sea slugs produce toxic chemicals that have applications in medicine. Although sea slugs are important for understanding a variety of biological processes, classification and geographical ranges of most species remain poorly known. In fact, many of the 6,000 species of sea slugs are still undescribed. Most of the major groups of sea slugs were described during the latter part of the 19th century and the majority have not been re-examined since. Very little information is available on the evolution of sea slugs and most of the subgroups of these snails are based on subjective comparisons rather than on scientific evolutionary studies. The focus of this PEET project will be to describe new species and determine natural groups of sea slugs based on evolutionary studies of anatomy. Since many groups of sea slugs have evolved similar external appearances, molecular studies will be used to supplement the anatomical information. The information contained in the molecules of DNA may provide evidence for the evolution of patterns within the sea slugs. Our strategy of bringing together data from a variety of sources provides a model for the study of animals with high degrees of superficial similarities between what are actually different lineages. In this way, the project will provide not only advances in problems specific to sea slug biology, but to the study of the myriad pathways by which clearly unrelated organisms can arrive at similar solutions to adaptive circumstances. This study will involve training of postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students to conduct modern systematic research on sea slugs. Students will be involved in all aspects of the proposed research, including field collections, species descriptions, morphological and molecular data collection and evolutionary analysis. The products from the project will include several publications and a Web page that will provide color images showing variation in living animals, gene sequences, detailed maps, bibliographies, and other data.