Phylogenomics investigation of sparids (Teleostei: Spariformes) using high-quality proteomes highlights the importance of taxon sampling

• Published in: Communications biology 2019-11, Vol.2 (1), p.400-400, Article 400
• Main Authors: Natsidis, Paschalis, Tsakogiannis, Alexandros, Pavlidis, Pavlos, Tsigenopoulos, Costas S., Manousaki, Tereza
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 38/91; 631/114; 631/114/739; 631/181/735; 631/181/757; Algorithms; Animals; Biology; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Databases, Genetic; Discordance; Genomes; Life Sciences; Orthology; Perciformes - classification; Perciformes - genetics; Phylogeny; Proteome - genetics; Sampling; Sparidae; Teleostei; Transcriptome
• ISSN: 2399-3642; 2399-3642
• DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-0654-5

Sparidae (Teleostei: Spariformes) are a family of fish constituted by approximately 150 species with high popularity and commercial value, such as porgies and seabreams. Although the phylogeny of this family has been investigated multiple times, its position among other teleost groups remains ambiguous. Most studies have used a single or few genes to decipher the phylogenetic relationships of sparids. Here, we conducted a thorough phylogenomic analysis using five recently available Sparidae gene-sets and 26 high-quality, genome-predicted teleost proteomes. Our analysis suggested that Tetraodontiformes (puffer fish, sunfish) are the closest relatives to sparids than all other groups used. By analytically comparing this result to our own previous contradicting finding, we show that this discordance is not due to different orthology assignment algorithms; on the contrary, we prove that it is caused by the increased taxon sampling of the present study, outlining the great importance of this aspect in phylogenomic analyses in general. Paschalis Natsidis et al. present a phylogenomic analysis of the sparid family to correct their previous phylogeny, placing them in a closer relationship with the pufferfish family. They show that increased taxon sampling is more important than orthology assignment algorithms in constructing accurate phylogenies.