Miguel Angel Meca

I am a PhD student of the University Museum of Bergen (Norway) conducting a systematic revision of the family Orbiniidae (Annelida) based on NGS data (i.e., mitogenomics and nuclear RNA gene clusters) and on the reevaluation of main diagnostic characters at generic level.

The three phylogenetic reconstructions of Orbiniidae by Bleidorn (2005), Bleidorn et al.(2009), and Zhadan et al. (2015) based on molecular data reported all genera included in the analysis as paraphyletic. However, a few of the resulted clades were poorly supported and the taxon coverage was rather small. With this in mind, we aim to achieve a good representation of the most species rich genera in the family (i,e., Scoloplos, Leitoscoloplos, Leodamas, Orbinia, Naineris and Phylo) and to include into the analysis representatives of the rest of the currently accepted genera. Once the phylogeny of Orbiniidae is infered, the resulted clades will be examined in search of synapomorphies and, with the help of morphometric analyses, the main genera will be redefined providing clear diagnostic characters for them.