Abstract
A complicated issue of very variable shell morphology in dogwhelks has led to a detailed discussion and set of complex analyses based on the methods of biochemical genetics, molecular genetics, and morphometrics. In this investigation, 29 allozyme loci and five morphometric shell characters were analysed for six samples of Nucella heyseana (Dunker, 1882) from Sakhalin Island, Primorye (Russia) and Onagawa Bay (Japan). An unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean dendrogram was constructed using genetic distances for the six populations of N. heyseana sampled, and when combined with an earlier study of N. freycinetti Deshayes, 1841, indicated that two separate species are present. However, the population genetic analysis in combination with multivariate analysis of variance, discriminant and factor analyses for morphometric traits lead us to conclude that all six samples taken from Russian and Japanese waters belong to a single species. The taxon, known in Japanese and Korean literature as N. freycinetti, is actually N. heyseana and N. freycinetti is the appropriate name for another species discovered earlier. For N. heyseana Nei’s minimal unbiased genetic distances were examined at three hierarchical levels: (1) within Onagawa Bay (Pacific coast of Honshu), Dm = 0.0059 ± 0.0056; (2) within the group of populations in Peter the Great Bay (Japan Sea, Russia), Dm = 0.0083 ± 0.0067 (Kartavtsev et al., 2000), and (3) within the whole area investigated in the north-western Pacific, Dm = 0.1550 ± 0.0209. Allele frequency heterogeneity and hierarchical variability showed that each bay contains a genetically distinct population of this species.
Published Version
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