Abstract

Species of the genus Pagurus have diversified into a wide variety of marine habitats across the world. Despite their worldwide abundance, the genus diversity and biogeographical relationship are relatively less understood at species-level. We evaluated the phylogenetic relationship and genetic diversity among the Pagurus species based on publicly available mitochondrial and nuclear markers. While independent analyses of different markers allowed for larger coverage of taxa and produced largely consistent results, the concatenation of 16S and COI partial sequences led to higher confidence in the phylogenetic relationships. Our analyses established several monophyletic species clusters, substantially corresponding to the previously established morphology-based species groups. The comprehensive species inclusion in the molecular phylogeny resolved the taxonomic position of a number of recently described species that had not been assigned to any morpho-group. In mitochondrial markers-based phylogenies, the “Provenzanoi” group was identified as the basal lineage of Pagurus. The divergence time estimation of the major groups of Pagurus revealed that the Pacific species originated and diversified from the Atlantic lineages around 25–51 MYA. The molecular results suggested a higher inter-regional species diversity and complex phylogenetic relationships within the diverse and heterogeneous members of the genus Pagurus. The study presents a comprehensive snapshot of the diversity of pagurid hermit crabs across multiple geographic regions.

Highlights

  • IntroductionHermit crabs (Anomura) are a morphologically and ecologically highly diverse group of decapod crustaceans, inhabiting various dimensions of elevations from inland to deepocean

  • Species of the NA region are confined to the North Atlantic gyre

  • Our analyses revealed that the highest intraregional genetic diversity was found among the species from northwestern Atlantic (NWA) (0.14), followed by species from the South Atlantic (SA) (0.13), Caribbean Sea (CS) (0.12), and North Pacific (NP) (0.10), whereas the lowest was found among the species from northeast Atlantic (NEA) (0.08) and northeast Pacific (NEP) (0.09)

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Hermit crabs (Anomura) are a morphologically and ecologically highly diverse group of decapod crustaceans, inhabiting various dimensions of elevations from inland to deepocean. To cope with versatile ecological biotopes, species of hermit crabs have evolved a variety of specialized body forms and behaviors. Species of this group are wellrecognized for their asymmetric, decalcified, and coiled hind body (pleon) which can be looped into gastropod shells for protective shelter [1,2]. These attributes have long attracted the interests of evolutionary biologists for addressing various questions in the evolution of asymmetrical body form and phenotypic diversity. While several aspects of phylogenetic relationship of anomuran have been extensively studied at higher taxonomic levels [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16], a large-scale species level phylogeny and diversity using molecular data has not been exhaustively investigated

Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call