November 2017
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39 Citations
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
Aglajidae is a family of predominantly colourful shallow water marine slugs widely distributed in coral, rocky and sandy habitats of tropical and temperate waters worldwide. The monophyly of the group is supported by morphological traits, but recent molecular phylogenetic studies questioned not only the monophyletic status of the family but also the definition of its traditional genera and relationships. Therefore, in order to test the monophyly of the family and of its genera and to elucidate internal sister relationships, we here present a new multilocus phylogenetic study based on Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood analyses of the largest ever assembled taxon and gene data sets of Aglajidae including 412 specimens from 63 species (74% of the global diversity) with representatives of type species of all genera and 835 DNA sequences of the gene markers COI, 16S rRNA, 28S rRNA and Histone-3. The genera Aglaja, Chelidonura, Odontoglaja and Philinopsis were confirmed as not monophyletic. Fifteen evolutionary lineages of generic status were recovered and seven are here described as new, namely Biuve, Camachoaglaja, Mannesia, Mariaglaja, Niparaya, Spinophallus and Tubulophilinopsis. The valid taxonomic status of Spinoaglaja is confirmed and Migaya is considered to be a junior synonym of Nakamigawaia. Our results support the hypothesis that events of radula loss or gain have happened independently at least twice in the evolutionary history of Aglajidae, but lack of node support in the deeper parts of our tree obscured inference on the sister relationships of genera. A new classification for Aglajidae is proposed and diagnostic features for all 15 genera are given. © 2017 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.