The patristic distances calculated for each morphological dataset were significantly correlated with those of the ML tree estimated from the molecular dataset based on Pearson correlation or Mantel tests (Table 4).
The morphological dataset was combined with the 20.1kb molecular supermatrix of Beck [10]-which comprises DNA sequence data from 7 nuclear genes (APOB, BRCA1, IRBP, PGK1, P1, RAG1, and VWF) and 15 mitochondrial loci (12S rRNA, 16S rRNA, tRNA valine, and 12 H-strand protein-coding genes -and analysed usingenes -and3.1.2 [37].
However, our morphological dataset was not constructed to solve this issue, since it relies on larval characters only.
Phenotypic variation in our morphological dataset is affected by both genetics and environment, whereas fish from the kinematic dataset would have been less influenced by environment.
The morphological dataset was analyzed using unordered parsimony with 1,000 random addition TBR branch swapping replicates using PAUP* [ 41], and we conducted 1,000 bootstrap replicates.
The morphological dataset is based on 41 characters, of these, 25 are floral and important traits previously used for subgeneric classification within Petrocosmea (see Additional file 1: Appendix S1).
The morphological dataset was updated with new data about buccal cartilages and the fine structure of the cephalic tentacles, and the validity of previous polarization of some characters like the absence of the hypobranchial gland or the flexoglosste condition of the radula was questioned [ 34].
In parallel, viral metagenomes combined with morphological datasets were used to assess viral community patterns and structure, providing a map of global dsDNA viral diversity in the surface- and deep ocean20,29 whereas for protists and metazoans, 18S rRNA metabarcoding allowed to profile eukaryotic diversity in the photic zone21.
Regarding the performed FDG-PET/CT studies, the acquired functional and morphological datasets were read separately.
The lengths of the branches of the morphological datasets were calculated using a Euclidean distance matrix (SAS Procedure DISTANCE SASS version 9.1.3).
