Congruence between ultraconserved element-based matrices and phylotranscriptomic datasets in the scorpion Tree of Life

Scorpions are ancient and historically renowned for their potent venom. Traditionally, the systematics of this group of arthropods was supported by morphological characters, until recent phylogenomic analyses (using RNAseq data) revealed most of the higher-level taxa to be non-monophyletic. While these phylogenomic hypotheses are stable for almost all lineages, some nodes have been hard to resolve due to minimal taxonomic sampling (e.g. family Chactidae). In the same line, it has been shown that some nodes in the Arachnid Tree of Life show disagreement between hypotheses generated using transcritptomes and other genomic sources such as the ultraconserved elements (UCEs). Here, we compared the phylogenetic signal of transcriptomes vs. UCEs by retrieving UCEs from new and previously published scorpion transcriptomes and genomes, and reconstructed phylogenies using both datasets independently. We reexamined the monophyly and phylogenetic placement of Chactidae, sampling an additional chactid species using both datasets. Our results showed that both sets of genome-scale datasets recovered highly similar topologies, with Chactidae rendered paraphyletic owing to the placement of Nullibrotheas allenii. As a first step toward redressing the systematics of Chactidae, we establish the family Anuroctonidae (new family) to accommodate the genus Anuroctonus.

Automated summary

Phylogenomic analyses of scorpion data from transcriptomes and genomes show similar results, but some nodes are difficult to resolve. The family Chactidae is found to be non-monophyletic, and a new family, Anuroctonidae, is established to accommodate the genus Anuroctonus.