Cichlid's sister lineage and a new group name

[Nothonotus]

Hey all,

I wanted to share a new publication based on DNA sequence data that finds cichlids are most closely related to Pholidichthys (Convict/Engineer gobies) and that these are a part of a larger group of fishes with adhesive eggs with chorionic filaments with a new name, Ovalentaria. The cool finding of this paper is that pharyngognathy, having pharyngeal jaws, has evolved multiple times. Pharyngognathy is one of the evolutionary 'innovations' that people cite as being at least partially responsible for the extreme diversity seen in fish groups like cichlids and labrids (Wrasses).

The abstract:
http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/06/27/sysbio.sys060.abstract

I have a pdf of the 'in press' version, but it's over 7mb. The final, journal formatted version won't be available for a while.

Enjoy,

Ben

[michi tobler]

Nice! Thanks for posting, Ben! What a great example of convergence causing misleading signals for phylogenetic analysis and taxonomy!
Cheers, m

[Florent]

Thanks !

[Bojan Dolenc]

interesting I found this fish (from my marine aquarium) immediately mentioned specifically in my heart, it's no wonder it is from the right family!