No abstract

The cone snails belong to the superfamily Conoidea, comprising ∼10,000 venomous marine gastropods. We determined the complete mitochondrial DNA sequence of Conus textile. The gene order is identical in Conus textile, Lophiotoma cerithiformis (another Conoidean gastropod), and the neogastropod Ilyanassa obsoleta, (not in the superfamily Conoidea). However, the intergenic interval between the coxI/coxII genes, was much longer in C. textile (165 bp) than in any other previously analyzed gastropod.We used the intergenic region to evaluate evolutionary patterns. In most neogastropods and three conidean families the intergenic interval is small (<30 nucleotides). Within Conus, the variation is from 130-170 bp, and each different clade within Conus has a narrower size distribution. In Conasprella, a subgenus traditionally assigned to Conus, the intergenic regions vary between 200-500 bp, suggesting that the species in Conasprella are not congeneric with Conus. The intergenic region was used for phylogenetic analysis of a group of fish-hunting Conus, despite the short length resolution was better than using standard markers. Thus, the coxI/coxII intergenic region can be used both to define evolutionary relationships between species in a clade, and to understand broad evolutionary patterns across the large superfamily Conoidea.