Abstract
The global genetic population structure of sailfish is not well understood, nor has it been well characterized in any of the major ocean basins. In this study, we surveyed the pattern of genetic differentiation of sailfish in the North Pacific Ocean using 307bp of sequence of the mtDNA control region I and five tetra-nucleotide microsatellite loci for 92 sailfish representing three North Pacific localities. We report significant genetic differentiation with both mitochondrial and nuclear markers between the western North Pacific Ocean collection from Taiwan (n=39) and the eastern North Pacific Ocean collections from Mexico (n=37) and Costa Rica (n=16), the latter of which were not significantly different from each other. These results corroborate genetic heterogeneity in the North Pacific previously observed using restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) of mtDNA, and three microsatellite loci, and indicate that sailfish from the eastern and the western North Pacific Ocean belong to distinct populations. Consistent with the levels of mtDNA variation reported in other marine species, sailfish in the eastern Pacific Ocean displayed significantly (p<0.05) less variation than in the western Pacific Ocean. In future studies, sample sizes and geographic coverage should be increased to resolve the population structure throughout the entire Pacific Ocean.
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