Convergent Acquisition of Nonembryonic Development in Styelid Ascidians.

摘要: Asexual propagation and whole body regeneration are forms of nonembryonic development (NED) widespread across animal phyla central in life history evolutionary diversification metazoans. Whereas it is challenging to reconstruct the gains or losses NED at large phylogenetic scale, comparative studies could benefit from being conducted more restricted taxonomic groups for which relationships well established. The ascidian family Styelidae encompasses strictly sexually reproducing solitary as colonial species that combine sexual reproduction with different NED. To date, between styelids remain controversial so pattern evolution. In this study, we built an original pipeline eight genomes 18 de novo assembled transcriptomes constructed data sets unambiguously orthologous genes. Using a phylogenomic super-matrix 4,908 genes these 26 tunicates provided robust phylogeny chordates, supports two convergent acquisitions This result prompted us further describe budding process Polyandrocarpa zorritensis, leading discovery novel mechanism asexual development. produced can be used reconstructions tunicates, here framework future experimental on emergence disappearance complex characters such regeneration.