RUI: Collaborative Research: Phylogenomics of Anthozoa (Cnidaria): new approaches to long-standing problems

American Museum Natural History, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Worldwide, humans and countless other species are dependent on coral reefs for shelter, sustenance and livelihoods. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing the world's oceans to become warmer and more acidic, a chemical change that may prevent corals from forming calcium carbonate skeletons. The fossil record indicates, however, that some groups of corals have survived similar environmental crises in past geological eras, and that changes in ocean chemistry may result in the evolution of different types of skeletons or of corals that lack skeletons. Understanding these past evolutionary transitions and the environmental conditions under which they occurred may help scientists predict the responses of today's reef-building corals to future climate change. This collaborative project between researchers from Harvey Mudd College, a Principally Undergraduate Institution, and the American Museum of Natural History will investigate the evolution of calcium carbonate skeletons in Anthozoa (corals, sea anemones, and relatives). They will first generate an extensive time-calibrated molecular phylogeny of the group and then use this evolutionary framework to study the evolution of skeletal characters. Students from groups underrepresented in the sciences will participate in this research through the PI's mentoring of undergraduates at the minority-serving New York City College of Technology, and the Scripps College Academy, a program for high school girls in the Los Angeles area. The project will also generate diverse outreach materials for a public display on corals at the American Museum of Natural History. Although previous molecular phylogenetic studies have found strong support for relationships among some orders of Anthozoa, key regions of the tree remain poorly resolved, impeding efforts to understand character evolution within the group. By first sequencing complete genomes from eight distantly related taxa of Anthozoa researchers will then design a set of Ultra-Conserved Elements (UCEs) that can be used throughout Anthozoa. UCE sequences will then be generated for 192 Anthozoa species spanning diversity within the group to generate the first phylogenomic estimate of relationships within the group. The researchers will then use this phylogenetic tree and a diverse set of comparative methods to infer the direction, timing and paleoclimatic correlates of evolutionary transitions in skeletogenesis and other traits within the clade that have allowed anthozoans to engineer the largest biological structures on the planet.