Genetic hypervariability of a Northeastern Atlantic venomous rockfish

• Autor(a) principal: Francisco, Sara M.
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Castilho, Rita, Lima, Cristina S., Almada, Frederico, Rodrigues, Francisca, Šanda, Radek, Vukić, Jasna, Pappalardo, Anna Maria, Ferrito, Venera, Robalo, Joana I.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/16814
• topic: Population structure; Connectivity; Atlantic-Mediterranean transition; Range expansion; Scorpaena maderensis; Scorpaenidae

Background: Understanding the interplay between climate and current and historical factors shaping genetic diversity is pivotal to infer changes in marine species range and communities’ composition. A hylogeographical break between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean has been documented for several marine organisms, translating into limited dispersal between the two basins. Methods: In this study, we screened the intraspecific diversity of 150 individuals of the Madeira rockfish (Scorpaena maderensis) across its distributional range (seven sampling locations in the Atlantic and Mediterranean basins) using the mitochondrial control region and the nuclear S7 first intron. Results: The present work is the most comprehensive study done for this species, yielding no genetic structure across sampled locations and no detectable Atlantic-Mediterranean break in connectivity. Our results reveal deep and hyper-diverse bush-like genealogies with large numbers of singletons and very few shared haplotypes. The genetic hyper-diversity found for the Madeira rockfish is relatively uncommon in rocky coastal species, whose dispersal capability is limited by local oceanographic patterns. The effect of climate warming on the distribution of the species is discussed.