Nicolas Straube: Glow in the dark sharks – interrelationships and evolution of bioluminescent sharks
Channel: Fishbase Sweden
Date: 2018-11-05

Nicolas Straube, Bavarian State Collection of Zoology, gave a lecture titled "Glow in the dark sharks – interrelationships and evolution of bioluminescent Chondrichthyes" at FishBase Symposium 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden, on 15th October, 2018.

ABSTRACT: My research foci lie on deciphering the phylogeny and systematics of deep-sea sharks, where I am making use of morphological and phylogenomic methods to explore adaptation, diversity, phylogeography and population structures in present and past. Among sharks, a noteworthy number of species has adapted to living in the deep-sea. Several of these species are bioluminescent using their light organs for camouflage and likely communication. Reconstructing the phylogenetic interrelationships is challenging, as several species are quite rare. Here, I present on latest DNA sequence-based methods for reconstructing the phylogeny of squaliform sharks comprising all luminescent taxa. With the help of phylogenetic trees, we are not only able to resolve higher-level interrelationships with confidence, but further track morphological characters available for group distinctions. Indirect evidence derived from estimated phylogenies allows for identifying luminescent organs in further shark species hitherto assumed to be non-luminescent and further, possible evolutionary scenarios can be reconstructed, which shaped the extant diversity. Scientific collections play a major role in my studies, as we are not only able to verify results from DNA based analyses on such morphological archives, but now also work on opening this archive to DNA analysis