TY - JOUR
T1 - A phylogenomic approach to resolve the arthropod tree of life
AU - Meusemann, Karen
AU - Reumont, von, Björn M.
AU - Simon, Sabrina
AU - Roeding, Falko
AU - Strauss, Sascha
AU - Kück, Patrick
AU - Ebersberger, Ingo
AU - Walzl, Manfred
AU - Pass, Günther
AU - Breuers, Sebastian
AU - Achter, Viktor
AU - von Haeseler, Arndt
AU - Burmester, Thorsten
AU - Hadrys, Heike
AU - Wägele, Johann Wolfgang
AU - Misof, Bernhard
N1 - ***<REP_Import><OA_Full_2012>113837.28</OA_Full_2012></REP_Import>***
PMID: 20534705
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Arthropods were the first animals to conquer land and air. They encompass more than three quarters of all described living species. This extraordinary evolutionary success is based on an astoundingly wide array of highly adaptive body organizations. A lack of robustly resolved phylogenetic relationships, however, currently impedes the reliable reconstruction of the underlying evolutionary processes. Here, we show that phylogenomic data can substantially advance our understanding of arthropod evolution and resolve several conflicts among existing hypotheses. We assembled a data set of 233 taxa and 775 genes from which an optimally informative data set of 117 taxa and 129 genes was finally selected using new heuristics and compared to the unreduced data set. We included novel EST data for eleven species and all published phylogenomic data augmented by recently published EST data on taxonomically important arthropod taxa. This thorough sampling reduces the chance of obtaining spurious results due to stochastic effects of undersampling taxa and genes. Orthology prediction of genes, alignment masking tools, and selection of most informative genes due to a balanced taxa-gene ratio using new heuristics were established. Our optimized data set robustly resolves major arthropod relationships. We received strong support for a sister group relationship of onychophorans and euarthropods, and strong support for a close association of tardigrades and cycloneuralia. Within pancrustaceans, our analyses yielded paraphyletic crustaceans and monophyletic hexapods, and robustly resolved monophyletic endopterygote insects. However, our analyses also showed for few deep splits that were recently thought to be resolved, for example the position of myriapods, a remarkable sensitivity to methods of analyses.
AB - Arthropods were the first animals to conquer land and air. They encompass more than three quarters of all described living species. This extraordinary evolutionary success is based on an astoundingly wide array of highly adaptive body organizations. A lack of robustly resolved phylogenetic relationships, however, currently impedes the reliable reconstruction of the underlying evolutionary processes. Here, we show that phylogenomic data can substantially advance our understanding of arthropod evolution and resolve several conflicts among existing hypotheses. We assembled a data set of 233 taxa and 775 genes from which an optimally informative data set of 117 taxa and 129 genes was finally selected using new heuristics and compared to the unreduced data set. We included novel EST data for eleven species and all published phylogenomic data augmented by recently published EST data on taxonomically important arthropod taxa. This thorough sampling reduces the chance of obtaining spurious results due to stochastic effects of undersampling taxa and genes. Orthology prediction of genes, alignment masking tools, and selection of most informative genes due to a balanced taxa-gene ratio using new heuristics were established. Our optimized data set robustly resolves major arthropod relationships. We received strong support for a sister group relationship of onychophorans and euarthropods, and strong support for a close association of tardigrades and cycloneuralia. Within pancrustaceans, our analyses yielded paraphyletic crustaceans and monophyletic hexapods, and robustly resolved monophyletic endopterygote insects. However, our analyses also showed for few deep splits that were recently thought to be resolved, for example the position of myriapods, a remarkable sensitivity to methods of analyses.
U2 - 10.1093/molbev/msq130
DO - 10.1093/molbev/msq130
M3 - Article
SN - 0737-4038
VL - 27
SP - 2451
EP - 2464
JO - Molecular Biology and Evolution
JF - Molecular Biology and Evolution
IS - 11
ER -