A phylogeny of extant coleoid cephalopods with brain data

Abstract

Extant coleoid cephalopods include over 800 species of octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, which have drawn scientific and public interest for their complex behavior and cognition. Of these, approximately 10% (79) species have adult specimens with recorded measures of central nervous system size distributed across various sources. Here, we use a combination of topological placements from previous phylogenetic studies, along with mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences obtained from GenBank, to build a composite phylogenetic tree with estimated branch lengths of all species with available brain measurements. This phylogeny is used for analyses in a forthcoming paper on cephalopod brain evolution, and ideally will be of use to other researchers interested in conducting comparative studies of coleoid cephalopod brains.