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Molecular Evidence that Sclerolinum brattstromi Is Closely Related to Vestimentiferans, not to Frenulate Pogonophorans (Siboglinidae, Annelida)

¹ Biology Department MS 33, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543
² Molecular Dynamics, Inc., part of Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, 928 East Arques Ave., Sunnyvale, California 94086-4250
³ Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, California 95039

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: khalanych{at}whoi.edu

Siboglinids, previously referred to as pogonophorans, have typically been divided into two groups, frenulates and vestimentiferans. Adults of these marine protostome worms lack a functional gut and harbor endosymbiotic bacteria. Frenulates usually live in deep, sedimented reducing environments, and vestimentiferans inhabit hydrothermal vents and sulfide-rich hydrocarbon seeps. Taxonomic literature has often treated frenulates and vestimentiferans as sister taxa. Sclerolinum has traditionally been thought to be a basal siboglinid that was originally regarded as a frenulate and later as a third lineage of siboglinids, Monilifera. Evidence from the 18S nuclear rDNA gene and the 16S mitochondrial rDNA gene presented here shows that Sclerolinum is the sister clade to vestimentiferans although it lacks the characteristic morphology (i.e., a vestimentum). The rDNA data confirm the contention that Sclerolinum is different from frenulates, and further supports the idea that siboglinid evolution has been driven by a trend toward increased habitat specialization. The evidence now available indicates that vestimentiferans lack the molecular diversity expected of a group that has been argued to have Silurian or possibly Cambrian origins.

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