Morphological variability and its phylogenetic signal in marine colonial organisms: a case study with the family Campanulariidae (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa)

Abstract

Many taxonomic studies using molecular and morphological data are reassessing species boundaries of groups with wide morphological variation. The overlapping of putative specific diagnostic characters leads to taxonomic confusion, and the relevance of morphological characters used to delimitate species is frequently misinterpreted. The family Campanulariidae is known for its wide morphological variation and complicated taxonomic history. In my PhD project, patterns of morphological variation of campanulariid species are contrasted with its phylogenetic relationships in order to understand how plastic are characters traditionally used in the taxonomy of the family. The proposed internship abroad is very important to achieve my goals, giving me access to a vast collection of samples and sharing benefits of a very productive academic atmosphere. I intend to study several species of the family Campanulariidae deposited in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (NMNH), including unique type materials and voucher specimens of DNA sequences deposited in GenBank. (AU)