Deep Arthropod Phylogeny from 100 Targeted Nuclear Coding-region Sequences

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

DEB-0120635 Clifford Cunningham, Joel Martin, Jermoe Regier, Jeffrey Schultz & Jeffrey Thorne A grant has been awarded to an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Duke University, University of Maryland, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, North Carolina State University, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This grant will support the largest effort to date to solve the major questions in the evolution of the arthropods. The arthropods -- which include insects, shrimp, centipedes, horshoe crabs, spiders and ticks -- represent more species than the rest of the animals combined. Despite more than a decade of molecular work, the relationships of these major groups of arthropods are not known. This grant will use information from the three completely sequenced animal genomes (human, worm, and fly) to help us obtain a giant dataset of nuclear protein coding sequences from 85 representative arthropod species. This dataset will include approximately 50,000 base pairs of DNA sequences per species, which is more than 10 times larger than the largest existing dataset. This project will not only decide the relationships of the major groups of arthropods, but will tell us which group of marine crustaceans (shrimps , lobsters and crabs) are the closest relatives to the insects, which represent the most successful invasion of land by any animal group. This grant will also support development of new statistical methods to estimate the dates of the major events in arthropod evolution, and, includes an innovative plan to develop teaching modules to expose underprivileged K-12 students in the Los Angeles region, and elsewhere in the country, to the evolution of the charismatic Arthropoda.