Neopterygian phylogeny: the merger assay

LÓPEZ-ARBARELLO, ADRIANA; SFERCO, EMILIA

Royal Society Open Science

The Royal Society Publishing

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018 vol. 5 p. 1 - 35

The phylogenetic relationships of the recently describedgenus ?Ticinolepis from the Middle Triassic of the Monte SanGiorgio are explored through cladistic analyses of the sofar largest morphological dataset for fossil actinopterygians,including representatives of the crown-neopterygian cladesHalecomorphi, Ginglymodi and Teleostei, and merging thecharacters from previously published systematic studiestogether with newly proposed characters. ?Ticinolepis isretrieved as the most basal Ginglymodi and our resultssupport the monophyly of Teleostei and Holostei, as wellas Halecomorphi and Ginglymodi within the latter clade.The patterns of relationships within these clades mostlyagree with those of previous studies, although a fewimportant differences require future research. According toour results, ionoscopiforms are not monophyletic, caturidsare not amiiforms and leptolepids and luisiellids form amonophyletic clade. Our phylogenetic hypothesis confirmsthe rapid radiation of the holostean clades Halecomorphiand Ginglymodi during the Early and Middle Triassic andthe radiation of pholidophoriform teleosts during the LateTriassic. Crown-group Halecomorphi have an enormous ghostlineage throughout half of the Mesozoic, but ginglymodiansand teleosts show a second radiation during the Early Jurassic.The crown-groups of Halecomorphi, Ginglymodi and Teleosteioriginated within parallel events of radiation during the LateJurassic.