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Integrative and Comparative Biology Advance Access originally published online on February 16, 2006
Integrative and Comparative Biology 2006 46(2):118-124; doi:10.1093/icb/icj013
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© The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology 2006. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Concordance of molecular and morphological data: The example of the Acoela

Matthew D. Hooge1 and Seth Tyler
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maine 5751 Murray Hall, Orono, ME 04469-5751, USA

Correspondence: 1E-mail: hooge{at}umit.maine.edu

Morphological features of the Acoela appear to be quite plastic, including those of the copulatory organs, which provide the principle characteristics used for the systematics of this group. Consequently, classification schemes of the Acoela comprise numerous polyphyletic groupings. In this review, we detail recent revisions of acoel systematics using molecular sequence data and new and reevaluated morphological characteristics. Gene trees are discordant with traditional systematic schemes but strongly concordant with new morphological characteristics obtained through the use of transmission electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy, namely, characteristics of body-wall and copulatory organ musculature, sperm, sperm ducts, sagittocysts, and immunocytochemistry of the nervous system. This merger of molecular and morphological data has led to significant changes in acoel classification, including a major emendation of the largest family of the Acoela, the Convolutidae, whereby half of its members were transferred to a newly created family, the Isodiametridae.


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