| Abstract |
A cladistic analysis of a large selection (106 taxa) of mud-shrimps from 26 genera of the families Callianassidae and Ctenochelidae was undertaken using Swofford's PAUP version 3.1.1.Of the 106 taxa, 26 were type species of 20 callianassid and six ctenochelid genera.Callianidea typa, the type species of the Callianideidae, was chosen as the outgroup.Ninety-three somatic morphological characters (13 of which are currently considered uninformative) were scored for the taxa in question.The resulting trees produced some consistent, and interesting, results.These include: 1) a monophyletic Ctenochelidae, with the inclusion of Anacalliax species (Anacalliacinae), considered by some carcinologists as callianassids; 2) a monophyletic Callianassidae; 3) a paraphyletic Callichirinae, with the consistent splitting of species groups from the genera Sergio and Neocallichirus, in particular; 4) a well supported monophyletic clade of callianassines (eight genera) with the exclusion of five Callianassa species; and 5) the subfamily Eucalliacinae (Calliax and Eucalliax) was a monophyletic clade, with the exception of the single species Calliax tooradin |
