Abai, MR

6th International Congress of DipterologyFLYTREE MOLECULES: The first tier phylogeny ofDiptera using multiple nuclear genesKim, J. (1), N. Barr (1), B. Cassel (1), & B.M. Wiegmann (1)(1) Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695,USA.We report preliminary results from phylogenetic analysis of nuclear genesfor the first tier taxa of the NSF Assembling the Tree of Life FLYTREEproject. Relationships among the major lineages of Diptera remain eitherpoorly resolved or hotly debated. Major questions surround thecomposition, monophyly, and relationships among dipteran infraorders andsuperfamilies. For example, exact sister groups for several major dipteranlineages, e.g., Brachycera, Calyptratae, are still undetermined. Existingmolecular phylogenies of Diptera are based on relatively few molecularmarkers. Despite some progress resolving relationships within majorsuperfamilies and families, most molecular datasets are still too limited intaxa, genes, or both, to answer conclusively many questions of higher-levelrelationships. As a major goal of the FLYTREE project, we are gatheringsequence data from nuclear protein encoding genes. To provide apreliminary assessment of progress to date, we combined nucleotidesequences from fragments of 12 nuclear genes along with full-length 18Sand 28S ribosomal DNA sequences, from 42 dipteran species plus threeoutgroups. Parsimony and Bayesian likelihood analyses of these datayields trees that are largely concordant with morphology-basedrelationships and with a recent supertree analysis. High parsimonybootstrap values (>70%) support the monophyly of the following dipteranclades: Brachycera, Eremoneura (Empidoidea + Cyclorrhapha),Cyclorrhapha, Schizophora, and Calyptratae. We find paraphyly for lowerDiptera (=“Nematocera”), lower Brachycera (=“Orthorrhapha”), basalCyclorrhapha (=“Aschiza”), and Acalyptratae. Our nuclear gene data forthe FLYTREE first tier demonstrates the great potential of nuclear genesequences to add significant resolution to the dipteran Tree of Life.Key Words: phylogeny, molecular systematics, FLYTREE, gene132