Abstract
Thunnus albacares is an important fishery species throughout the world. Polymorphisms of sequence variations in mtDNA COI genes were assessed to explore the genetic differentiations among 11 populations of T. albacares sampled from the central Pacific Ocean. Sixty-one mtDNA haplotypes and 38 variable sites were detected. Analysis of mtDNA COI sequences revealed that tuna from the 11 localities were characterized by moderately high haplotype diversity (h = 0.650 ± 0.040), while sequence divergence between haplotypes was relatively low (π = 0.00364 ± 0.00044). Analyses of molecular variance and F ST analysis supported that significant genetic differentiations existed between some of the sampled populations. Tests of neutral evolution and mismatch distribution analysis suggested that T. albacares might have experienced a population expansion, which possibly occurred within the last 0.82 million years. Our study unraveled the genetic structure of the extant population of T. albacares and addressed the related fishery management issues including fishery stock identification and management.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to express our thanks to all the people in the Tuna Technique Groups for their help with sample collection. This work was supported in part by the Major Research Plan Fostering Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 91131006), the “Shu Guang” Project of the Shanghai Municipal Education Development Commission and the Shanghai Education Development Foundation (grant no. 13SG51). The grants from the Shanghai Municipal Project for First-class Discipline of Fisheries to Shanghai Ocean University and from the Opening Project of the Key Laboratory of Sustainable Exploitation of Oceanic Fisheries Resources, Ministry of Education, are appreciated.
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Li, W., Chen, X., Xu, Q. et al. Genetic Population Structure of Thunnus albacares in the Central Pacific Ocean Based on mtDNA COI Gene Sequences. Biochem Genet 53, 8–22 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-015-9666-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10528-015-9666-0