The top-tier journal Nature doesn’t often deal in purely phylogenetic research. So when such a study graces their pages we know it’s big stuff.
Yesterday, Nature published a 62 gene, 75 species analysis of the evolutionary history of the arthropods. Arthropods, as readers of this blog likely know, are animals with a chitinous exoskeleton and jointed legs. They include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, centipedes, and others. This is a staggeringly diverse group, and one found just about everywhere on the planet. Most animals are arthropods.
This study has been in the works for many years. Jerry Regier’s lab at the University of Maryland has been diligently developing protocols for extracting single-copy nuclear DNA from across the arthropods, and the work has paid off handsomely. They have created the largest and most relevant data set yet assembled for addressing the hard questions in arthropod evolution. This is exciting! Today is like Christmas for arthropod systematists.
There’s a lot to digest here, but below are my first impressions: (more…)