Document of bibliographic reference 345860

BibliographicReference record

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Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Book/Monograph

Type of document

Dissertation

BibLvlCode

M

Title

Molecular phylogenetics of the hermit crab genera Paguristes Dana, 1851,Areopaguristes Rahayu, 2005, and Pseudopaguristes McLaughlin, 2002(Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomura) with descriptions of two new species

Abstract

Hermit and king crabs represent a considerable portion of decapod biodiversity, yet the evolutionary relationships among them remain poorly understood. Much of this uncertainty results from intraspecific variation and convergence in morphological characters historically used for diagnosis of species and higher-level taxonomic groupings. The utility of Maximum Likelihood (ML) phylogenetic methods for analyses based on genetic data has been acknowledged by many systematic studies of decapods at a variety of taxonomic levels. This dissertation employed ML phylogenetic analyses based on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA data to elucidate the evolutionary relationships among hermit and king crabs at various levels of taxonomic sampling. The work is presented as a compilation of articles for future publication, the first of which focused on a subset of Paguristes, Areopaguristes, andPseudopaguristes species from the western Atlantic. That study demonstrated a lack of monophyly for all three genera and identified two new species previously suggested bymorphology. Further results confirmed that color is a key character for species diagnosis andhas potential to delineate broader taxonomic subgroups. Morphological descriptions for thesenew species were provided in the second article of this volume, along with a comparativediscussion of potentially allied species. The final article in this volume expanded the numberPaguristes, Areopaguristes, and Pseudopaguristes species in the phylogenetic analysis and included gene sequences for the type species of the three genera of primary interest were obtained, thereby enabling broader conclusions about the constituency of the genera. Major findings indicated numerous genetic clades within the generic complex, although the taxonomic scope and status of these clades was not definitively determined. Still, many of the clades recovered could be tentatively diagnosed by morphological characters that may prove useful for future taxonomic revisions. Based on such observations, it was suggested that Paguristes s.s. may be best represented by those taxa most closely allied with A. hummi and morphologically similar Pacific species such as A. lemaitrei, and A. waldoschmitti. The constituency and affiliation of Areopaguristes s.s. remained poorly defined, but phylogenetic outcomes suggested that Pseudopaguriste s.s. is composed of species with 8 quadriserial gill pairs and enlarged right chelipeds.

Bibliographic citation

Craig, C.W. (2021). Molecular phylogenetics of the hermit crab genera Paguristes Dana, 1851,Areopaguristes Rahayu, 2005, and Pseudopaguristes McLaughlin, 2002(Crustacea: Decapoda: Anomura) with descriptions of two new species. PhD Thesis. University of Louisiana at Lafayette: Lafayette. 164 pp.

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open access

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