Towards a combined phylogeny of the family Characidae (Characiformes)

MIRANDE, JUAN MARCOS

São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo

Congreso; XXX Hennig Meeting; 2011

Willi Hennig Society

Phylogeny of the highly diverse fish family Characidae was recently studied both from molecular and morphological data. These analyses, although based on different kinds of information, have a relatively high congruence considering the phylogenetic uncertainties associated with this family. This analysis is a combined approach to the phylogeny of Characidae using all the available information and some additional morphological data. This phylogeny includes sequences of nuclear RAG2, SINA, and FKH and mitochondrial 12S, 16S, COX1, and CYTB genes obtained from public sources. The available molecular information was restricted to that traceable to vouchers deposited in scientific collections. Data matrix is composed of relatively slightly overlapping morphological and molecular blocks, and many species has only one of these kind of data. Thus, the resulting dataset, composed of 366 species and 2440 informative "characters" has a 69% of missing entries. The analyses were analyzed by parsimony under a modification of implied weighting method (see Goloboff talk for details) exploring 11 values of K between 8.5 and 90. This analysis is preliminar given the high proportion of missing entries, but the resulting phylogeny is rather congruent with previous ones and it is a starting point to add "modules" of both morphological and molecular information in the near future.