Revisiting the phylogeny of Zoanthidea (Cnidaria: Anthozoa): Staggered alignment of hypervariable sequences improves species tree inference

摘要

Graphical abstractDisplay OmittedHighlights?A current and comprehensive maximum-likelihood phylogeny of Zoanthidea is proposed.?Inference based upon concatenated multi-gene, multi-genomic staggered alignment.?Staggered alignment is phylogeny-informed and retains all nucleotides in the analysis.?Complete-data tree is more robust and defensible than the hypervariable-excluded tree.AbstractThe recent rapid proliferation of novel taxon identification in the Zoanthidea has been accompanied by a parallel propagation of gene trees as a tool of species discovery, but not a corresponding increase in our understanding