Driving south: a multi-gene phylogeny of the brown algal family Fucaceae reveals relationships and recent drivers of a marine radiation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Understanding the processes driving speciation in marine ecosystems remained a challenge until recently, due to the unclear nature of dispersal boundaries. However, recent evidence for marine adaptive radiations and ecological speciation, as well as previously undetected patterns of cryptic speciation is overturning this view. Here, we use multi-gene phylogenetics to infer the family-level evolutionary history of Fucaceae (intertidal brown algae of the northern Pacific and Atlantic) in order to investigate recent and unique patterns of radiative speciation in the genus Fucus in the Atlantic, in contrast with the mainly monospecific extant genera.

Results

We developed a set of markers from 13 protein coding genes based on polymorphic cDNA from EST libraries, which

SUBMITTER: Canovas FG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3292578 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature