Phylogeny and evolution of Decapoda Crustacea

With an estimated 15,000 described species, Decapoda, including shrimps, lobsters and crabs, is one of the most species-rich and diverse extant group of crustaceans. We have worked on the phylogeny and evolution of decapods for almost 20 years. My team is the first group who extensively applied nuclear protein-coding gene markers in decapod phylogeny (Tsang et al 2008). We have robustly resolved the phylogeny of multiple decapod taxa and published several highly cited papers (e.g. Tsang et al 2011; 2014). We have published the first phylogenomic work in crabs (Ma et al 2019). 

Beyond the higher taxonomic level phylogenetic reconstruction, we are also interested in how trait evolution drives diversification in decapod, target organisms include terrestrial crabs (Tsang et al 2022), symbiotic crabs (Chow et al 2023) and shrimps (Chow et al 2019, 2021). We plan to reconstruct a fully dated genus-level molecular phylogeny for the Order Decapoda to elucidate their tempo and mode of speciation, based on a time calibrated family-level phylogenomic backbone tree combined with a genus-level supermatrix containing >7,000 species using backbone-and-patch approach combined with taxonomy to achieve a fully dated decapod phylogeny. We would reconstruct the trait transition history and conduct trait dependent speciation rate analyses to identify the shift(s) in diversification rate in respect to ecological niche innovation, latitudinal & bathymetric distribution, and biographical history.

We hope our work would illuminate the pattern and drivers promoting speciation in the marine realm and establish a phylogenetic informed natural classification scheme for the Order Decapoda.