Tag Archives: Morphology

Tooth Morphogenesis and Differentiation 2016 – First Announcement

Dear Colleagues,

It is our great pleasure to announce the upcoming 12th Tooth Morphogenesis and Differentiation conference, which will be held in Porvoo (Finland), from the 13th to the 18th of June 2016.

The original spirit of the TMD conference has been preserved as all participants will be housed at the conference venue to provide maximum opportunity for sharing their common passion for dental and craniofacial research.

Further information can be found on the conference website:

www.tmd2016.org  The call for abstracts and the opening of registration will be announced later by email and on the website.

Please, share the information with people who might be interested.

Looking forward to seeing you all in Finland.

Best regards,

The organising committee
Frederic Michon (Chairperson)
Jukka Jernvall
Pekka Nieminen

Arthropod fossil data increase congruence of morphological and molecular phylogenies

Not vertebrates, but a good example of using fossils to increase congruence between morphological and molecular systematics.

– Laura

Arthropod fossil data increase congruence of morphological and molecular phylogenies

The relationships of major arthropod clades have long been contentious, but refinements in molecular phylogenetics underpin an emerging consensus. Nevertheless, molecular phylogenies have recovered topologies that morphological phylogenies have not, including the placement of hexapods within a paraphyletic Crustacea, and an alliance between myriapods and chelicerates. Here we show enhanced congruence between molecular and morphological phylogenies based on 753 morphological characters for 309 fossil and Recent panarthropods. We resolve hexapods within Crustacea, with remipedes as their closest extant relatives, and show that the traditionally close relationship between myriapods and hexapods is an artefact of convergent character acquisition during terrestrialisation. The inclusion of fossil morphology mitigates long-branch artefacts as exemplified by pycnogonids: when fossils are included, they resolve with euchelicerates rather than as a sister taxon to all other euarthropods.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130930/ncomms3485/full/ncomms3485.html