Jim I cant open the links. Would love to see and post them on PB.

FYI centrarchids relationship chart.

[Linked Image from forums.pondboss.com]

PS and RES are fairly closely related see chart (but not as close as once thought). Both have pharyngeal teeth/plates (eat snails). But who knows in genetics what traits will be dominate and show up.

From https://fishlab.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/397/2020/06/Near-et-al-2004.pdf

Investigating phylogenetic relationships of sunfishes and black
basses (Actinopterygii: Centrarchidae) using DNA sequences
from mitochondrial and nuclear genes
Thomas J. Near,* Daniel I. Bolnick, and Peter C. Wainwright
Center for Population Biology, One Shields Avenue, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
Received 27 September 2003; revised 17 December 2003
Available online 28 February 2004



Third, L. microlophus and L. gibbosus are the only
Lepomis species with specialized diets, feeding primarily
on snails. Both species exhibit behavioral and morphological specializations that function in crushing snail
shells. The specializations include expanded tooth areas
on the upper and lower pharyngeal jaws, hypertrophied
pharyngeal jaw muscles, and a specialized muscle motor
pattern (Lauder, 1983, 1986; Wainwright and Lauder,
1992). Previous morphology-based phylogenetic hypotheses proposed L. microlophus and L. gibbosus as
sister species, indicating that these specializations for
molluscivory have had a single evolutionary origin
(Bailey, 1938; Mabee, 1993). However, both MP and
BML analyses {Both maximum parsimony (MP) and Bayesian maximum likelihood (BML) analyses were used to generate
phylogenetic hypotheses from the DNA sequence data} do not recover this relationship, but instead result in a set of strongly supported nodes with L.
gibbosus as the sister species to the clade (L. microlophus
(L. punctatus and L. miniatus)) (Figs. 1 and 3). L.
miniatus and L. punctatus are not molluscivores and do
not exhibit the specialized behavior or morphology observed in L. gibbosus and L. microlophus (Lauder, 1983,
1986). The result of this phylogenetic analysis indicates
that ecological diversification between generalist and
specialist strategies may have a higher frequency of
change in the course of the evolutionary history of
Lepomis than previously hypothesized.

Last edited by ewest; 03/02/21 02:37 PM.