Abstract

This paper evaluates the phylogeny of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) combining most available information (44 markers from nuclear and mitochondrial DNA and 274 morphological characters). The molecular partition of the dataset was produced through a pipeline (Gb-to-TNT) that allows the fast building of large matrices from GenBank format. The analyzed dataset has 8104 species, including representatives of all orders and 95% of the 475 families of Actinopterygii. This is the most diverse phylogenetic dataset analyzed to date both for the Actinoperygii as for most families and orders of this clade. Analyzed morphological characters are features known for families or orders since many years, which can be unequivocally coded from data on literature. Analyses are by parsimony under several weighting schemes. General results agree with previous classifications, especially in groups with better gene sampling and those long thought (from morphological evidence) to be monophyletic. Many clades have low support and some orders are not recovered as monophyletic units. Inclusion of morphological characters is shown to be feasible and valuable in large-scale analyses. Additional data and synthetic studies on homologies are needed to obtain synapomorphies and diagnoses for most clades.