Researchers Complete Mollusk Evolutionary Tree

[Tank]

Researchers Complete Mollusk Evolutionary Tree

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2011) — Mollusks have been around for so long (at least 500 million years), are so prevalent on land and in water (from backyard gardens to the deep ocean), and are so valuable to people (clam chowder, oysters on the half shell) that one might assume scientists had learned everything about them...

...In a paper in Nature, researchers from Brown and collaborating institutions have pieced together the most comprehensive phylogeny -- evolutionary tree -- for mollusks. To perform that feat, the team collected hard-to-find specimens through a global sampling effort, including a group of organisms thought until recently to be extinct for millions of years. The team then sequenced thousands of genes from the specimens and matched them up through intensive computational analyses involving the supercomputer at Brown, which the University installed in 2009.

The result: The mollusk phylogeny is now "resolved at a broad scale," said Dunn, assistant professor of biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the paper's corresponding author...

An example of a real 'tree of knowledge' with many more to follow!

[OldGit]

Great - now the world's our oyster!

[Tank]

Great - now the world's our oyster!

lol. Or calamari?