Origin of Tropical Sea Anemone Diversity

Contrary to the generally observed pattern of hyperdiversity in the tropics, anemone diversity peaks in temperate ecosystems. As a result, tropical species have received a fraction of the scientific attention as temperate ones, with no major efforts in the systematics of tropical anemone diversity since the advent of modern DNA sequencing. Compounding a lack of systematic effort in the tropics, anemones have few diagnostic morphological characters and slowly evolving mitochondrial DNA that is ineffective as a species-level marker. Thus, it is likely that tropical anemone diversity is vastly under-described, and a genomic approach is required to simultaneously delimit species, place them into broader phylogenomic context, and determine what morphological characters are informative at every hierarchical level. Using newly developed bait-capture probes for Class Anthozoa, we are testing whether the tropics are a center of origin, or a center of accumulation, of tropical sea anemone diversity. This project will be the first major phylogenomic reconstruction within the Order Actiniaria and is funded by the National Science Foundation