Abstract
Uzbekistan is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, where all rivers are endorheic basins. Although fish diversity is relatively poor in Uzbekistan, the fish fauna of the region has not yet been fully studied. The aim of this study was to establish a reliable barcoding reference database for fish in Uzbekistan. A total of 666 specimens, belonging to 59 species within 39 genera, 17 families, and 9 orders, were subjected to polymerase chain reaction amplification in the barcode region and sequenced. The length of the 666 barcodes was 682 bp. The average K2P distances within species, genera, and families were 0.22%, 6.33%, and 16.46%, respectively. The average interspecific distance was approximately 28.8 times higher than the mean intraspecific distance. The Barcode Index Number (BIN) discordance report showed that 666 specimens represented 55 BINs, of which five were singletons, 45 were taxonomically concordant, and five were taxonomically discordant. The barcode gap analysis demonstrated that 89.3% of the fish species examined could be discriminated by DNA barcoding. These results provide new insights into fish diversity in the inland waters of Uzbekistan and can provide a basis for the development of further studies on fish fauna.
Highlights
Spanning more than 35,900 species[1], fish account for half of all extant vertebrate species and are well known for their uneven distribution of species diversity[2]
Approximately 400 new fish species have been described annually over the past 20 years[1], anthropogenic impacts, such as water pollution from plastic and other household waste, river dams, water withdrawal, overfishing, poaching, and habitat degradation have resulted in a catastrophic loss of fish d iversity[9,10,11]
Among the various molecular approaches used for species molecular identification, DNA barcoding based on mitochondrial DNA is one of the most suitable tools for species-level identification[17,18]
Summary
Spanning more than 35,900 species[1], fish account for half of all extant vertebrate species and are well known for their uneven distribution of species diversity[2]. Fish identification can be challenging, owing to the similar morphology of congeners during their early life histories as well as due to contradictions in the existing literature and taxonomic history; this is true even if experienced taxonomists work with whole intact adults. The inherent limitations of morphology-based taxonomy and the decreased number of taxonomists require molecular approaches for fish species identification[16]. MtDNA-based molecular identification has several advantages over morphological approaches. Advances in technology make it fairly easy to replicate and read DNA sequences, while bioinformatic software can automatically compare the resulting sequences; the training required to approach molecular identification is much less than that required for morphological identification. The main goal of this project is to enable the identification of fish species by comparing the sequence of queries against the database of reference sequences in the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD)[42]. Compared to other regions of the world, studies devoted to fish barcoding are almost absent in Central Asia
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