Abstract
The Ponto-Caspian region is the main donor of invasive amphipods to freshwater ecosystems, with at least 13 species successfully established in European inland waters. Dikerogammarus spp. and Pontogammarus robustoides are among the most successful, due to their strong invasive impact on local biota. However, genomic knowledge about these invaders is scarce, while phylogeography and population genetics have been based on short fragments of mitochondrial markers or nuclear microsatellites. In this study, we provide: (i) a reconstruction of six mitogenomes for four invasive gammarids (D. villosus, D. haemobaphes, D. bispinosus, and P. robustoides); (ii) a comparison between the structure of the newly obtained mitogenomes and those from the literature; (iii) SNP calling rates for individual D. villosus and D. haemobaphes from different invasion sites across Europe; and (iv) the first time-calibrated full mitogenome phylogeny reconstruction of several Ponto-Caspian taxa. We found that, in comparison to other gammarids, the mitogenomes of Ponto-Caspian species show a translocation between the tRNA-E and tRNA-R positions. Phylogenetic reconstruction using the mitogenomes identified that Ponto-Caspian gammarids form a well-supported group that originated in the Miocene. Our study supports paraphyly in the family Gammaridae. These provided mitogenomes will serve as vital genetic resources for the development of new markers for PCR-based identification methods and demographic studies.
Highlights
The Ponto-Caspian region (Azov, Black, and Caspian seas with surrounding areas) is a significant donor of invasive amphipods to European inland water bodies [1,2,3]
The primary goal of our study is to provide a comparative reconstruction of mitogenomes of four invasive gammarids of Pontio-Caspian origin (D. villosus, D. haemobaphes, D. bispinosus, and P. robustoides)
The second case was the transcriptome of Gammarus pulex (SRR8089725), which showed the presence of two mitochondrial genomes, one of G. fossarum and second belonging to G. pulex; only the latter was used in our analyses
Summary
The Ponto-Caspian region (Azov, Black, and Caspian seas with surrounding areas) is a significant donor of invasive amphipods to European inland water bodies [1,2,3]. D. villosus is regarded as one of the worst 100 invasive species in Europe [20,21] and has been deemed the worst non-native amphipod invader of English and Welsh waterways by the UK Environment Agency [22]. In recent years these species have accelerated their invasion, as new records, especially of D. villosus, were noted in English and Welsh waterways [22], Baltic States [7], and the Masurian Lake district in Poland [23]. The European invasion of D. villosus is followed by D. haemobaphes [6] and, most recently, by Pontogammarus robustoides [25,26]
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