2025/02/27 by Zeyuan Chen, J. Antonio Baeza, Chong Chen +12 · 4 voices · 13 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · #Marine Biology and Ecology Research #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Aquatic Invertebrate Ecology and Behavior
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.ads0215
Extreme morphological disparity within Mollusca has long confounded efforts to reconstruct a stable backbone phylogeny for the phylum. Familiar molluscan groups-gastropods, bivalves, and cephalopods-each represent a diverse radiation with myriad morphological, ecological, and behavioral adaptations. The phylum further encompasses many more unfamiliar experiments in animal body-plan evolution. In this work, we reconstructed the phylogeny for living Mollusca on the basis of metazoan BUSCO (Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs) genes extracted from 77 (13 new) genomes, including multiple members of all eight classes with two high-quality genome assemblies for monoplacophorans. Our analyses confirm a phylogeny proposed from morphology and show widespread genomic variation. The flexibility of the molluscan genome likely explains both historic challenges with their genomes and their evolutionary success.