Abai, MR

6th International Congress of DipterologyFLYTREE MORPHOLOGY: Preliminary analysis of thefirst tier datasetLambkin, C.L. (1), T. Pape (2), G.W. Courtney (3), V.A. Blagoderov (3), J.H. Skevington(4), B.J. Sinclair (5), D.K. Yeates (1), R. Meier (6) & B.M. Wiegmann (7)(1) CSIRO Entomology, Canberra ACT 2601 AUSTRALIA(2) Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, DK – 2100, DENMARK(3) Department of Entomology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 50011, USA(4) Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, ON, K0A 3M0, CANADA(5) Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, D-53113 Bonn, GERMANY(6) Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 117543SINGAPORE(7) Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695,USAWe report the results of the preliminary analysis of the morphologicaldataset for the first tier taxa for FLYTREE, a large internationalcollaboration producing new, comprehensive data sets for Dipteraphylogenetics funded by the US National Science Foundation’sAssembling the Tree of Life (ATOL) initiative. This international team ofscientists is bringing together existing and new morphological evidence onfly relationships across the entire order, producing data sets unprecedentedin their size and the breadth of their coverage of taxa. New and traditionalmorphological character interpretations across the entire order have beenassembled and developed. Here, we summarize our current progress in oneof the principal tasks of the project; the construction and preliminaryanalysis of large morphological data matrices for a backbone phylogeny,based on a matrix of 42 ingroup taxa and over 350 characters. Thiscomprehensive new phylogeny will provide a valuable framework fortesting evolutionary hypotheses and will be critical to comparative studiesof dipteran development, behaviour, genomics, and neurobiology.Key Word: Assembling the Tree of Life∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗149