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Systematics, phylogeny and biogeography
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Phylogeny of Echiura updated, with a revised taxonomy to reflect their placement in Annelida as sister group to Capitellidae

Ryutaro Goto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5425-9603 A E , James Monnington B , Marija Sciberras B , Isao Hirabayashi C and Greg W. Rouse https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9036-9263 D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Seto Marine Biological Laboratory, Field Science Education and Research Center, Kyoto University, 459 Shirahama, Nishimuro, Wakayama 649-2211, Japan.

B School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Menai Bridge, Anglesey LL59 5AB, UK.

C Kushimoto Marine Park Center Ltd, 1157 Arita, Kushimoto, Wakayama 649-3514, Japan.

D Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.

E Corresponding author. Email: gotoryutaro@gmail.com

Invertebrate Systematics 34(1) 101-111 https://doi.org/10.1071/IS19020
Submitted: 2 April 2019  Accepted: 8 August 2019   Published: 10 February 2020

Abstract

Echiura (commonly called spoon worms) are derived annelids that have an unsegmented sausage-shaped body with a highly extensible anterior end (i.e. a proboscis). Echiura currently contains two superfamilies: Echiurioidea (with Echiuridae, Urechidae and Thalassematidae) and Bonellioidea (with Bonelliidae, and Ikedidae). Ikedidae contains only Ikeda, which is distinctive in having a huge trunk, a highly elongate proboscis with stripes or dots, and numerous gonoducts. A recent molecular phylogeny of Echiura recovered Ikedidae as the sister group to Bonelliidae. However, due to relatively low support values for the monophyly of Bonelliidae, this relationship remains problematic. In this study, we reinvestigated the relationship of Bonelliidae and Ikedidae using an expanded dataset with more taxa and genes. In contrast to the previous results, our analyses strongly support that Ikeda is nested within Bonelliidae due to the placement of Maxmuelleria. On the basis of this result, we synonymise Ikedidae with Bonelliidae and transfer Ikeda to the latter, the diagnosis of which is amended. In addition, we synonymise Urechidae with its sister group Echiuridae because they share the synapomorphy of having anal chaetae rings. Furthermore, considering that recent phylogenetic studies have consistently recovered Echiura as the sister group to Capitelliidae within Annelida, we drop the rank of the echiuran clade to family-level and propose a revised classification: Thalassematidae with two subfamilies, Thalassematinae (with two tribes Echiurini and Thalassematini) and Bonelliinae. In addition, we identified a sample collected from the deep sea (~1820 m) of Monterey Bay, California, based on its molecular data. This terminal unexpectedly formed the sister group to the eight genera of Thalassematini, most members of which are inhabitants of littoral zones.

Additional keywords: Bonelliidae, dwarf males, Ikedidae, sexual dimorphism, spoon worm, Thalassematidae.


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