Patterns of Evolutionary Change in Baikalian Gammarids Inferred from DNA Sequences (Crustacea, Amphipoda)

✍ Scribed by D.Yu. Sherbakov; R.M. Kamaltynov; O.B. Ogarkov; E. Verheyen

• Book ID: 102615750
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 191 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1055-7903
• DOI: 10.1006/mpev.1997.0482

✦ Synopsis

The Baikalian gammarids (Crustacea, Amphipoda) are the most widely known and most spectacular example of an adaptive radiation among contemporary freshwater invertebrates. To study the phylogeny of the Baikalian gammarids we sequenced a 622-bp-long fragment of the nuclear gene coding for 18S rRNA from species of 18 endemic Baikalian genera and Gammarus pulex-a non-Baikalian taxon. Some important morphological characters appear independently in both lineages and suggest parallelism in the development of gigantism and body armament. The first lineage comprises benthic, mostly unarmed taxa. The second lineage contains predominantly armed taxa, most of which are detrivorous or carnivorous.