New publication out on morwongs!

I am happy to announce that my collaboration with Christopher Burridge at the University of Tasmania, and Prosanta Chakrabarty at Louisiana State University is finally published! This study uses a genomic approach to determine the evolutionary relationships among fishes in the suborder Cirrhitoidei, which contains hawkfishes (Cirrhitidae), marblefishes (Aplodactylidae), kelpfishes (Chironemidae), trumpeters (Latridae) and morwongs (Cheilodactylidae). This was my first foray into genomic methods and I started the lab work for this early on in my PhD. Slowly, the project grew until we had sampled almost every single species in this group, which has allowed us to confidently make taxonomic revisions. When I started this project it was known that Cheilodactylidae was not monophyletic, but no revisions had ever been made. Late last year the first major revision of this group was made by a Japanese team of researchers led by Katsuya Kimura using a morphological approach. Our study complements that study by adding in additional taxonomic sampling and genomic data. Hopefully the two of these papers together will settle any taxonomic confusion within this group of fishes. 

A figure from the manuscript of a new genus that we described in this paper. This species has always been problematic, and it turns out that it more distantly related to other species of Goniistius that previously thought.