Unpouching Peracarida relationships with ultraconserved elements
Peracarida is a large group containing twelve orders of brooding crustaceans, including the large orders Amphipoda, Isopoda, Tanaidacea and Cumacea, and a series of smaller orders, some restricted to isolated habitats. The relationships of Peracarida have been disputed and no attempt has been made to use extensive taxon sampling with a modern genetic approach. Here we present a novel probe set of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) developed for peracarids to investigate higher-level relationships using newly collected Antarctic material and collection-based specimens. Concatenated and coalescent-based analyses across different levels of occupancy matrices recovered strong support for the monophyly of Peracarida and for the clade Mancoida (Isopoda + Tanaidacea + Cumacea). Thermosbaenacea was consistently resolved as the sister group to all remaining peracarids. Within Amphipoda, our results contrast with previous phylogenies by placing Corophiida and Hyperiidea as early-branching lineages. In Isopoda, Oniscidea was recovered as monophyletic and concordant with morphological hypotheses. These findings provide one of the first phylogenomic frameworks for Peracarida and demonstrate the promise of UCEs for resolving long-standing questions in malacostracan evolution.