A cladistic analysis of species of Lambis (Gastropoda: Strombidae)
Abstract
A cladistic analysis of the 9 species currently classified as the genus Lambis (Abbott, 1961) was conducted. Three species in the genus Strombus (Abbott, 1960) were used as outgroups. Features of the radula, soft anatomy, and shell were coded as binary character states (i.e., in a manner that allotted one character state for every bit of information). Each of two most-parsimonious cladograms obtained contains a clade that included all 9 species of Lambis, one including a single species of Strombus and the other including two. On the basis of this cladistic analysis. Lambis is paraphyletic and Strombus is polyphyletic. Therefore, the traditional classifications of species within these genera are untenable. The results obtained are used to reassess hypotheses of morphological evolution and adaptive function of circum-apertural projections of strombid gastropods.