Robert Putnam, Utah Valley University
Biology
Pannota, the fused back mayflies, is divided into two main lineages: Ephemerelloidea and Caenoidea. Most of the pannote families are relatively small, in terms of number of genera, with the exception of the larger family Ephemerellidae with 32 genera. Our objective was to 1) test the monophyly of the superfamilies; 2) investigate the relationships within the families of the Pannota as a whole. We combined DNA sequence data with newly generated data (total of ~6 genes) for around 50 taxa. We used standard PCR and DNA sequencing protocols to generate the data. The molecular data were aligned in Muscle and subsequently phylogenetic trees were reconstructed under Parsimony, Maximum Likelihood, and Bayesian frameworks. The results strongly supported the monophyly of the superfamilies, while the relationships of the families within Ephemerelloidea were not resolved.