Genetic hypervariability of a Northeastern Atlantic venomous rockfish

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 phylogeographical 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.

Keywords

Population structure Connectivity Atlantic-Mediterranean transition Range expansion Scorpaena maderensis Scorpaenidae

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/8330

Citation

Francisco, S. M., Castilho, R., Lima, C. S., Almada, F., Rodrigues, F., Šanda, R., Vukić, J., Pappalardo, A. M., Ferrito, V., & Robalo, J. I. (2021). Genetic hypervariability of a Northeastern Atlantic venomous rockfish. PeerJ, 1–21.