Abstract
Genetic diversity and population structure are fundamental to studying population dynamics and understanding demographic history, playing a key role in marine organism conservation. To study the genetic diversity and population structure of whitespotted conger Conger myriaster, an important commercial marine species, broadly distributed in Asia, a total of 197 individuals were collected from six locations along the East China Coast. Around 655 bp sequence of mitochondrial control region was used to assess the genetic diversity, population differentiation, and demographic history of C. myriaster populations. A high level of haplotype diversity was detected. No significant population structure was observed by using analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA), consistent with the results of discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) and Mantel tests. Bayesian phylogenetic tree revealed three distinct lineages, which diverged during the Pleistocene. Mismatch and Bayesian skyline analyses supported that all geographical populations as well as three evolutionary lineages had experienced demographic expansions. This genetic assessment would give an important contribution to revealing the interaction between phylogeographic history and demographic history and future utilization and conservation of this species.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Prof. Mengxia Liu and Dr. Wei Liu, in the Marine Biology Institute of Shandong Province, for sample collection in the field. We also thank the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions which greatly helped to improve the manuscript.
Funding
This study was funded by the Major Agricultural Application Technology and Innovation Project of Shandong Province (2017–2020), Special Program for Basic Research of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2014FY110500), and the National Infrastructure of Fishery Germplasm Resource (No. 2017DKA30470).
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All mitochondrial control region haplotypes were registered in GenBank under accession numbers MK030178-MK030340. The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Congcong Zou and Lijuan Wang designed and performed the experiments, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. Feng You conceived the experiments and revised the manuscript. Lingming Kong participated in the data analysis. Yingjun Wang, Jianhe Xu, Aihuan Song, and Hongjun Liu collected and prepared the fish samples. Zhihao Wu carried out the sample identification. All authors read and approved the manuscript.
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Zou, C., Wang, L., Kong, L. et al. High levels of genetic diversity and connectivity of whitespotted conger Conger myriaster in the East China Coast. Mar. Biodivers. 50, 47 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-020-01071-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-020-01071-x