Reconstruction of Family-Level Phylogenetic Relationships within Demospongiae (Porifera) Using Nuclear Encoded Housekeeping Genes

Abstract

These results, using an independent nuclear gene set, confirmed many hypotheses based on ribosomal and/or mitochondrial genes, and they also identified clades with low statistical support or clades that conflicted with traditional morphological classification. Our results will serve as a basis for future exploration of these outstanding questions using more taxon- and gene-rich datasets.