Phylogenetic Signal Dissection Identifies the Root of Starfishes
- Creators
- Feuda, Roberto
- Smith, Andrew B.
Abstract
Relationships within the class Asteroidea have remained controversial for almost 100 years and, despite many attempts to resolve this problem using molecular data, no consensus has yet emerged. Using two nuclear genes and a taxon sampling covering the major asteroid clades we show that non-phylogenetic signal created by three factors - Long Branch Attraction, compositional heterogeneity and the use of poorly fitting models of evolution – have confounded accurate estimation of phylogenetic relationships. To overcome the effect of this non-phylogenetic signal we analyse the data using non-homogeneous models, site stripping and the creation of subpartitions aimed to reduce or amplify the systematic error, and calculate Bayes Factor support for a selection of previously suggested topological arrangements of asteroid orders. We show that most of the previous alternative hypotheses are not supported in the most reliable data partitions, including the previously suggested placement of either Forcipulatida or Paxillosida as sister group to the other major branches. The best-supported solution places Velatida as the sister group to other asteroids, and the implications of this finding for the morphological evolution of asteroids are presented.
Additional Information
© 2015 Feuda, Smith. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Received: December 4, 2014; Accepted: February 20, 2015; Published: May 8, 2015. We thank Davide Pisani for discussion and suggestions throughout the progress of this research. All analyses were performed using the infrastructures provided by the University of Bristol. Author Contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: RF ABS. Performed the experiments: RF. Analyzed the data: RF ABS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RF ABS. Wrote the paper: RF ABS. Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The authors have no support or funding to report. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Attached Files
Published - journal.pone.0123331.pdf
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0123331.s001.PHY
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0123331.s002.TIFF
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Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0123331.s012.TIFF
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0123331.s013.TIFF
Supplemental Material - journal.pone.0123331.s014.DOCX
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC4425436
- Eprint ID
- 58453
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150623-121300292
- Created
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2015-06-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field