Venerid bivalves are a family of clams found in the world's oceans and in the fossil record. Their shells are generalized and uniform in morphology, making it difficult to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships among subfamilies and genera. Dr. Mary Ellen Harte proposes to learn a molecular technique called radioimmunoassaying that measures the amount of protein divergence between living species. Preliminary data will establish the appropriateness of this approach for future study of bivalve molluscs at this level of the taxonomic hierarchy. If successful, the classification based on molecular data will be compared to that based on morphological characters. The results of this study will have impact in three areas. Most immediately, Dr. Harte will add a new and valuable research technique to the capabilities she already possesses. Second, this exploratory project may illuminate the evolutionary relationships among a diverse and long-lived group, thereby opening up interesting research projects on their ecology, geographic distribution, and function. Finally, the genealogy produced may reveal evolutionary affinities that do not correspond to morphological characters, indicating that different branches of the group's evolutionary tree have converged on similar morphologies, presumably for functional reasons. Such a result would be of great interest to evolutionary biologists and paleontologists.
