ZOROASTERIDAE, Sladen, 1889

Mah, Christopher & Foltz, David, 2011, Molecular phylogeny of the Forcipulatacea (Asteroidea: Echinodermata): systematics and biogeography, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 162 (3), pp. 646-660 : 652

THE ZOROASTERIDAE

Monophyly of the Zoroasteridae was shown by Blake (1990) and reviewed by Mah (2007a), who tested relationships among the genera within the family. Our results ( Figs 2 , 3 ) show Zoroaster as the monophyletic sister clade to a lineage that supports Myxoderma and Doraster as sister taxa. This differs from the zoroasterid relationships outlined by Mah (2007a), which support Doraster + Zoroaster as a sister taxon to Myxoderma , but three nominal zoroasterid genera are absent from our trees. Further taxon sampling is needed for a complete test of intrafamilial relationships.

Figures

Figure 2. Maximum-likelihood tree for 95 forcipulate taxa and nine velatidan taxa, rooted on 111 taxa belonging to the Valvatida, Paxillosida, and Notomyotida (these taxa have been omitted for clarity), and based on 261 bp of sequence data for the 12S rDNA gene and 437 bp for the 16S rDNA gene. Bootstrap support values are based on 250 pseudoreplicates and are shown as percentages when ± 50%. Named clades correspond either to traditional taxonomic groups or to geographically restricted lineages.

Figure 3. Maximum-likelihood tree for 78 forcipulate taxa and five velatidan taxa, based on 327 bp for the early-stage histone H3 gene plus the same rDNA sequences that were used in Figure 2. Bootstrap support values are based on 200 pseudoreplicates. Other details are as described in Figure 2.