Phylogenomics of Crinoidea (sea lilies and feather stars)

Crinoids (sea lilies and featherstars) are one of five classes of extant echinoderms, and the only one to present a stemmed morphology. They represent a deeply divergent lineage, sharing a last common ancestor with their closest living echinoderm relatives over 500 million years ago. While extremely successful during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, their living diversity is comparatively low (approx. 700 species), although they remain important components of modern marine ecosystems. They remain a relatively understudied group, and the phylogenetic relationships among the major living forms are still uncertain. This project focused on resolving the phylogenetic relationships and divergence times of living crinoids using a phylogenomic approach based on targeted exon capture.