Phylogenomic analyses of the pike-cichlids (Cichlidae: Crenicichla and Teleocichla): buldying a phylogenetic backbone for macroevolutionary inferences

• Grant number: 18/24086-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: June 01, 2019
• End date: May 15, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology - Taxonomy of Recent Groups
• Principal Investigator: Claudio de Oliveira
• Grantee: Henrique Rosa Varella
• Supervisor: Hernán López-Fernández
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IBB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Michigan, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/21901-1 - Macroevolution of Pike Cichlids (Teleostei: Cichlidae: Crenicichla and Teleocichla) in South America: total evidence analyses using an exon-based phylogenomic approach, BP.PD

Abstract

The first two months of project were devoted to survey, from Brazilian collections, most of the tissues that will be used for the phylogenomic analyses; the third comprised a 21-days-travel to USA to select a complimentary material from ANSP, ROM and UMMZ. Thus, now, there are about 73% of the taxonomic diversity of the target group (clade Crenicichla-Teleocichla) available, besides many putative new species. Around 130 operational taxonomic units will be analyzed, the most comprehensive species-level phylogenetic analysis of pike cichlids so far. As explained in the main project, this study has been developed in close partnership with Prof. López-Fernández, who developed a toolkit for exon-based, next generation sequencing (NGS) specifically for cichlids. Using this protocol in a 2018 paper, 128 Neotropical cichlids were sequenced, including 15 species of the clade Crenicichla-Teleocichla. The main objective of the full-year in the Prof. López-Fernández's Lab (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA) is to learn and perform the phylogenomic analyses of the clade Crenicichla-Teleocichla, to built a phylogenetic, time-calibrated backbone for the macroevolutionary inferences that we proposed in the main project. This period will be crucial not only to deeply understand all steps of the technique, but also to turn our morphological data, obtained in the doctoral study under a phylogeny perspective based on parcimony, readible by the comparative methods integrated to the molecular phylogeny. NGS methods have generated phylogenies far more robust than those with traditional multilocus analyses. Exon-based NGS seems to be more adequate for the timescale we are dealing with than Ultraconserved Elements (UCES) or ddRADseq approaches used in the previous genomic phylogenies of the clade. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

VARELLA, HENRIQUE R.; KULLANDER, SVEN O.; MENEZES, NAERCIO A.; OLIVEIRA, CLAUDIO; LOPEZ-FERNANDEZ, HERNAN. Revision of the generic classification of pike cichlids using an integrative phylogenetic approach (Cichlidae: tribe Geophagini: subtribe Crenicichlina). ZOOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY, v. 198, n. 4, p. 53-pg., 2023-06-21. (18/24086-5, 13/17056-9, 15/21901-1, 18/20610-1)