Phyletic patterns of early development in gastropod molluscs.

Cell lineage data for 30 exemplar gastropod taxa representing all major subclades and the outgroup Polyplacophora were examined for phylogenetic signal using cladistic analysis. Most cell lineages show phyletic trends of acceleration or retardation relative to the outgroup and more basal ingroup taxa, and when coded this variation is phylo-genetically informative. PAUP analyses of a cell lineage data set under three sets of character ordering assumptions produced similar tree topologies. The topologies of the strict consensus trees for both ordered and Dollo (near irreversibility of character transformations) character assumptions were similar, whereas the unordered character assumption recovers the least phyletic information. The cell lineage cladograms are also in agreement with the fossil record of the timing and sequence of gastropod subclade origination. A long branch lies between the Patellogastropoda+Vetigastropoda grade and the Neritopsina+Apogastropoda clade. The geological timing of this long branch is correlated with the first large-scale terrestrially derived eutrophication of the near-shore marine habitat, and one possible explanation for this branch may be a developmental shift associated with the evolution of feeding larvae in response to the more productive conditions in the near-shore water column. Although character transformations are highly ordered in this data set, developmental rate characters (like all other morphological and molecular characters) are also subject to homoplasy. Finally, this study further supports the hypothesis that early development of gastropod molluscs has conserved a strong phyletic signal for about half a billion years.