What is the currently accepted phylogeny of the Astacidea (Crustacea)?
There are several out there (mostly put forward in the past 5 years) but I'm having trouble discerning any consensus
Answers:
While it is generally agreed that the freshwater crayfish (Astacida) are a monophyletic group, their relationship to other decapods is indeed a matter of contention.
Much of the lack of consensus seems to come from different workers using totally different characters on which to base their cladograms. Morphologically based clades which include fossil specimens tend to come out with a different taxonomy than ones based on biochemical analyses, or ones based solely on the morphology of spermatophores.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about decapod systematics to judge the veracity of any of the cladograms. I've had trouble just identifying which species of crayfish we have had invading our rivers and man-made lakes the last few years.
So at this time, there does not seem to be a consensus about Astacid phylogeny. Perhaps someday someone will construct a cladogram including all of the characters utilized in everyone else's paper, and make none of them happy.
Sorry, I know nothing about crayfish phylogeny, so my answer is somewhat worthless.
I just wanted to say I'm somewhat shocked and even impressed to see an actual question and answer of substance on this site amidst all the nonsense! :)
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Answers:
While it is generally agreed that the freshwater crayfish (Astacida) are a monophyletic group, their relationship to other decapods is indeed a matter of contention.
Much of the lack of consensus seems to come from different workers using totally different characters on which to base their cladograms. Morphologically based clades which include fossil specimens tend to come out with a different taxonomy than ones based on biochemical analyses, or ones based solely on the morphology of spermatophores.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about decapod systematics to judge the veracity of any of the cladograms. I've had trouble just identifying which species of crayfish we have had invading our rivers and man-made lakes the last few years.
So at this time, there does not seem to be a consensus about Astacid phylogeny. Perhaps someday someone will construct a cladogram including all of the characters utilized in everyone else's paper, and make none of them happy.
Sorry, I know nothing about crayfish phylogeny, so my answer is somewhat worthless.
I just wanted to say I'm somewhat shocked and even impressed to see an actual question and answer of substance on this site amidst all the nonsense! :)
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