Amino acids (AA) all genes for: Beyond Drosophila: resolving the rapid radiation of schizophoran flies with phylotranscriptomics

Background:

The largest radiation of animal life since the end Cretaceous extinction event 66 million years ago is that of schizophoran flies: a third of fly diversity including Drosophila lab fruit flies, house flies, and many other well and poorly known true flies. Rapid diversification has hindered previous attempts to elucidate the phylogenetic relationships among major schizophoran clades. A robust phylogenetic hypothesis for the major lineages containing these 55,000 described species would be critical to understand the processes that contributed to the diversity of these agriculturally, medically, and forensically important flies. We use protein encoding sequence data from transcriptomes, including 3,145 genes from 70 species, representing all superfamilies, to improve the resolution of this previously intractable phylogenetic challenge.

Results:

Our results support a paraphyletic acalyptrate grade including a monophyletic Calyptratae and the monophyly of half of the aca...