How many species of goliath grouper are there? Cryptic genetic divergence in a threatened marine fish and the resurrection of a geopolitical species

Endangered Species Research

0¹  A. A. Bertoncini¹  M. T. Craig¹  D. R. Robertson¹  J. R. Hyde¹  L. C. Gerhardinger¹  M. Hostim-Silva¹  M. O. Freitas¹  B. P. Ferreira¹  R. A. Torres¹  R. T. Graham¹ 

关键词: Epinephelus itajara;    Epinephelus quinquefasciatus;    Phylogeography;    Epinephelidae;   

DOI  :  10.3354/esr00117

学科分类：动物科学

来源: Inter-Research

【 摘 要 】

ABSTRACT: The goliath grouper Epinephelus itajara (Epinephelidae) is an exceptionally large marine fish that inhabits sub-tropical and tropical waters of the Americas and western Africa. Due to a lack of readily observable morphological variation in specimens across its range, the goliath grouper has been regarded as a single species. We tested the hypothesis that Pacific and West Atlantic populations constitute a single species by analyzing nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence data. We found numerous fixed genetic differences for mitochondrial loci between Pacific and West Atlantic goliath grouper (genetic distance D ≈ 3.5% at 16S and D ≈ 6% at cytochrome b; ϕ_st = 0.98 [p < 0.001] for 16S and ϕ_st = 0.98 [p < 0.001] for cytochrome b). The nuclear S7 intron showed 3 fixed nucleotide differences between Pacific and West Atlantic populations. Within the West Atlantic, we found few absolute genetic differences (D < 0.01 at 16S and D < 0.02 at cytochrome b), but statistically significant population structure based on haplotype frequency data (ϕ_st = 0.04 [p = 0.05] at 16S; ϕ_st = 0.14 [p < 0.001] at cytochrome b). These data indicate that (1) goliath grouper in the West Atlantic are subdivided into discrete populations, (2) goliath grouper populations in the Pacific and western Atlantic represent 2 (or more) distinct species, and (3) these distinct populations/species require separate management and conservation strategies. We resurrect the species Epinephelus quinquefasciatus (Bocourt 1868) for Pacific goliath grouper.

【 授权许可】

Unknown