Molecular Systematic Analyses of Mediterranean Skates (Rajiformes)
Mitochondrial 16S ribosomal RNA was used to elucidate the pattern of relationships and systematic status of 4 genera, including 9 species of skates (Rostroraja alba, Leucoraja fullonica, Dipturus oxyrinchus, D. batis, Raja clavata, R. montagui, R. asterias, R. miraletus, and R. radula), living in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The 16S rDNA dataset contained 39 variable and 29 parsimony informative sites. The mean nucleotide diversity (Pi) was 0.018. The genetic distances between pairs of species showed genetic homogeneity between R. clavata and R. montagui. The highest value of sequence divergence was detected between D. oxyrinchus and R. asterias (0.040). Low genetic distances were shown by the comparisons of R. montagui with R. miraletus and of R. clavata with R. miraletus. The phylogenetic tree revealed 4 main evolutionary lineages; the first lineage included R. clavata, R. montagui, and R. miraletus. L. fullonica was clustered with R. asterias in the second lineage. In the third lineage, D. batis and D. oxyrinchus showed a close relationship, which was the sister group to R. radula. R. alba was clustered separately from all others.
Molecular Systematic Analyses of Mediterranean Skates (Rajiformes)
Mitochondrial 16S ribosomal RNA was used to elucidate the pattern of relationships and systematic status of 4 genera, including 9 species of skates (Rostroraja alba, Leucoraja fullonica, Dipturus oxyrinchus, D. batis, Raja clavata, R. montagui, R. asterias, R. miraletus, and R. radula), living in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The 16S rDNA dataset contained 39 variable and 29 parsimony informative sites. The mean nucleotide diversity (Pi) was 0.018. The genetic distances between pairs of species showed genetic homogeneity between R. clavata and R. montagui. The highest value of sequence divergence was detected between D. oxyrinchus and R. asterias (0.040). Low genetic distances were shown by the comparisons of R. montagui with R. miraletus and of R. clavata with R. miraletus. The phylogenetic tree revealed 4 main evolutionary lineages; the first lineage included R. clavata, R. montagui, and R. miraletus. L. fullonica was clustered with R. asterias in the second lineage. In the third lineage, D. batis and D. oxyrinchus showed a close relationship, which was the sister group to R. radula. R. alba was clustered separately from all others.
___
- Avise, J.C. 1994. Molecular markers, natural history and evolution, Chapman and Hall, New York, NY. pp. 511.
- Durand, P., Pointier, J.P., Escoubeyrou, K., Arenas, J., Yong, M., Amarista, M., Bargues, M.D., Mas-Coma, S. and Renaud, F. 2002. Occurrence of a sibling species complex within neotropical lymnaeids, snail intermediate hosts of fascioliasis. Acta Trop. 83: 233-240.
- Felsenstein, J. 1985. Confidence limits on phylogenies: An approach using the bootstrap. Evolution. 39: 783-791.
- Hall, T.A. 1999. BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nuc. Acid. Symp. 41: 95-98.
- Heist, E.J. and Gold, J.R. 1999. Microsatellite DNA variation in sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus) from the Gulf of Mexico and Mid- Atlantic Bight. Copeia. 1999: 182-186.
- Kocher, T.D. and Stepien, C.A. 1997. Molecular Systematics of Fishes. Academic Press, San Diego.
- Kumar, S., Tamura, K. and Nei, M. 2004. MEGA3: integrated software for molecular evolutionary genetics analysis and sequence alignment. Brief. Bioinform. 5: 150-163.
- Last, P.R. and Stevens, J.D. 1994. Sharks and Rays of Australia. CSIRO, Australia. 513 p.
- McEachran, J.D. and Miyake, T. 1990. Zoogeography and bathymetry of Skates (Chondrichthyes: Rajoidei). in: Elasmobranchs as Living Resources: Advances in the Biology, Ecology, Systematics, and the Status of the Fisheries (H.L. Pratt Jr., S.H. Gruber and T. Taniuchi, eds.). NOAA. Tech. Rep. 90: 305-326.
- McEachran, J.D. and Dunn, K.A. 1998. Phylogenetic analysis of skates, a morphologically conservative clade of elasmobranchs (Chondrichthyes: Rajidae). Copeia. 2: 271-290.
- Meyer, A. 1992. Cichlid fishes: behaviour, ecology and evolution by M.H.A. Keenleyside ed. Q. Rev. Biol. 67: 221-222.
- Meyer, A., Kocher, T.D. and Basasibwaki, P. 1990. Monophyletic origin of victoria cichlid fish suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequences. Nature. 347: 550-553.
- Nelson, J.S. 1994. Fishes of the World, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York.
- Normark, B.B., McCune, A.R. and Harrison, R.G. 1991. Phylogenetic relationships of Neopterygian fishes, inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequences. Mol. Biol. Evol. 8: 819-534.
- Perez, J., Alvarez, P., Martinez, J.L. and Garcia-Vazquez, E. 2005. Genetic identification of hake and megrim eggs in formaldehyde- fixed plankton samples. ICES J. Mar. Sci. 62: 908-914.
- Posada, D. and Crandall, K.A. 1998. Modeltest: testing the model of DNA substitution. Bioinformatics. 14: 817-818.
- Rocco, L., Stingo, V. and Bellitti, M. 1996. Cloning and characterization of a repetitive DNA detected by HindIII in the genome of Raja montagui (Batoidea, Chondrichthyes). Gene. 176: 185-189.
- Stehmann, M. and Bürkel, D.L. 1984. Rajidae. p. 163-196. In Whitehead, P.J.P., Bauchot, M.L., Hureau, J.C., Nielsen, J., Tortonese, E. (eds.) Fishes of the north-eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. UNESCO. Paris. vol. 1
- Tamura, K. and Nei, M. 1993. Estimation of the number of nucleotide substitutions in the control region of mitochondrial DNA in humans and chimpanzees. Mol. Biol. Evol. 10: 512-526.
- Thompson, J.D., Gibson, T.J., Plewniak, F., Jeanmougin, F. and Higgins, D.G. 1997. The ClustalX windows interface: flexible strategies for multiple sequence alignment aided by quality analysis tools. Nucleic. Acids Res. 24: 4876-4882.
- Tinti, F., Ungaro, N., Pasolini, P., DePanfilis, M., Garoia, F., Guarniero, I., Sabelli, B., Marano, G. and Piccinetti, C. 2003. Development of molecular and morphological markers to improve species-specific monitoring and systematics of Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean skates (Rajiformes). J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 288: 149-165.
- Valsecchi, E., Pasolini, P., Bertozzi, M., Garoia, F., Ungaro, N., Vacchi, M., Sabelli, B. and Tinti, F. 2005. Rapid Miocene-Pliocene dispersal and evolution of Mediterranean rajid fauna as inferred by mitochondrial gene variation J. Evol. Biol. 18: 436-446.
- Zardoya, R. and Doadrio, I. 1999. Molecular evidence on the evolutionary and biogeographical patterns of European cyprinids. J. Mol. Evol. 49: 227-237.