* Manuscript 1 Phylogeny of the families Pyuridae and Styelidae (Stolidobranchiata, Ascidiacea) 2 inferred from mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences 3 4 Pérez-Portela Ra, b, Bishop JDDb, Davis ARc, Turon Xd 5 6 a Eco-Ethology Research Unit, Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada (ISPA), Rua 7 Jardim do Tabaco, 34, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal 8 9 b Marine Biological Association of United Kingdom, The Laboratory Citadel Hill, PL1 10 2PB, Plymouth, UK, and School of Biological Sciences, University of Plymouth PL4 11 8AA, Plymouth, UK 12 13 c School of Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong NSW 2522 14 Australia 15 16 d Centre d’Estudis Avançats de Blanes (CSIC), Accés a la Cala St. Francesc 14, Blanes, 17 Girona, E-17300, Spain 18 19 Email addresses: 20 Bishop JDD:
[email protected] 21 Davis AR:
[email protected] 22 Turon X:
[email protected] 23 24 Corresponding author: 25 Rocío Pérez-Portela 26 Eco-Ethology Research Unit, Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada (ISPA), Rua 27 Jardim do Tabaco, 34, 1149-041 Lisboa, Portugal 28 Phone: + 351 21 8811226 29 Fax: + 351 21 8860954 30
[email protected] 31 1 32 Abstract 33 34 The Order Stolidobranchiata comprises the families Pyuridae, Styelidae and Molgulidae. 35 Early molecular data was consistent with monophyly of the Stolidobranchiata and also 36 the Molgulidae. Internal phylogeny and relationships between Styelidae and Pyuridae 37 were inconclusive however. In order to clarify these points we used mitochondrial and 38 nuclear sequences from 31 species of Styelidae and 25 of Pyuridae. Phylogenetic trees 39 recovered the Pyuridae as a monophyletic clade, and their genera appeared as 40 monophyletic with the exception of Pyura.