Evolution of bioluminescence in Anthozoa with emphasis on Octocorallia

Bioluminescence is a widespread phenomenon that has evolved multiple times across the tree of life, converging among diverse fauna and habitat types. The ubiquity of bioluminescence, particularly in marine environments where it is commonly used for communication and defense, highlights the adaptive value of this trait, though the evolutionary origins and timing of emergence remain elusive for a majority of luminous organisms. Anthozoan cnidarians are a diverse group of animals with numerous bioluminescent species found throughout the world’s oceans, from shallow waters to the light-limited deep sea where bioluminescence is particularly prominent. This study documents the presence of bioluminescent Anthozoa across depth and explores the diversity and evolutionary origins of bioluminescence among the Octocorallia – a major anthozoan group of marine luminous organisms. Using a phylogenomic approach and ancestral state reconstruction, we provide evidence for a single origin of bioluminescen..., The recently published fossil-calibrated phylogeny (Quattrini et al. 2020) (1,729 loci) was used to map bioluminescent traits and depth categories across Anthozoa. 
For the phylogenomic analyses, new fully-resolved phylogeny for Octocorallia reconstructed using target-capture sequence data (from 739 loci from 185 octocoral taxa) (McFadden et al. 2022), was used to investigate the evolution of bioluminescence in octocorals. The tree was constructed using maximum likelihood in IQTree v2.1 using the best model (GTR+F+R10). Divergence-dating of this recently revised octocoral tree was conducted using BEAST v 2.6 as outlined in Quattrini et al. (2020). First, a time-calibrated starting tree of the phylogeny in McFadden et al. 2022 was generated using penalized likelihood method (chronopl, based on 26) in the R package ape. The calibration points included the minimum ages of two fossils and a minimum age at the crown Octocorallia and at the root of the tree, obtained from Quattrini et al. (20..., , # Evolution of bioluminescence in Anthozoa with emphasis on Octocorallia

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Bioluminescence is a widespread phenomenon. Anthozoan cnidarians are a diverse group of animals with numerous bioluminescent species found throughout the world’s oceans, from shallow waters to the light-limited deep sea where bioluminescence is particularly prominent. This study documents the presence of bioluminescent Anthozoa across depth and summarizes those findings here. Further, it explores the diversity and evolutionary origins of bioluminescence among Octocorallia – a major anthozoan group of marine luminous organisms. Using phylogenomic analyses, including the production of a fossil-calibrated phylogeny for Octocorallia, and ancestral state reconstruction (ASR) for bioluminescent traits and ocean depth habitats, we provide evidence for a single origin of bioluminescence in Octocorallia and infer the age of occurrence to around the Cambrian era, approximately 540 million yea...