Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 1, 2026

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry-Based Targeted Metabolomics of Hard Coral Samples
Published on: October 13, 2023
The use of physiological data to corroborate cospeciation events in symbiosis
1Department of Biology, New Mexico State University, MSC 3AF, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
Abstract:
The symbiotic association between sepiolid squids (Family Sepiolidae) and luminous bacteria (Genus Vibrio) provides an unusually tractable model to study the evolution and speciation of mutualistic partnerships. Both host and symbiont can be cultured separately, providing a new avenue to test phylogenetic congruence through molecular and physiological techniques. Combining both molecular and morphological data as well as measuring the degree of infectivity between closely related pairs can help decipher not only patterns of co-speciation between these tightly linked associations, but can also shed new light on the evolution of specificity and recognition among animal-bacterial associations.
Related Concept Videos
Phylogenetic Species Concept in Microbiology
Symbiosis
Formation of Species
The Evidence for Evolution
Speciation Rates
Genetics of Speciation
