FILOGENIA MOLECULAR DE CLUPEIFORMES E O POSICIONAMENTO DE ALGUNS TÁXONS DAS REGIÕES DO ATLÂNTICO OCIDENTAL E AMAZÔNIA

Abstract

The taxonomy of herrings, sardines and anchovies from morphological and molecular characters has been largely approached, but the phylogenetic relationships among most of the taxa are little resolved. The present study of the mitochondrial ribosomal 16S gene using, adding sequence data for 14 species of Neotropical sardines from both marine and freshwater habitats, 10 of which appear for the first time in molecular phylogenetic analysis. Results from Bayesian, Maximum Likelihood and Parsimony analyses strongly support the monophyly of the families Pristigasteridae and Engraulidae, but were not able to recover the monophyly of the family Clupeidae. In addition, Chirocentridae and Sundasalangidae, appear in polytomic arrangements among some Clupeidae/Clupeiformes lineages. Curiously, Odontognathus mucronatus and Pellona harroweri, a Western Atlantic species which were included in a molecular phylogenetic analysis for the first time were key species, breaking up the monophyly of both Pellona and Ilisha inside the Pristigasteridae. Additional examples of paraphyly and/or polyphyly were observed for several traditional genera, such as Sardinella , Anchoa and Engraulis . The present analysis successfully resolved some relevant aspects of its taxonomy and opened several questions that will demand additional sampling effort and new phylogenetic analyses to better clarify the taxonomy of this rich group of fishes. Keywords: Clupeiformes, molecular phylogeny, Amazonian, sardines, mitochondrial.