Molecular Identification and Phylogenetic Relationships of Threadfin Breams (Family: Nemipteridae) Using mtDNA Marker

Vaithilingam Ravitchandirane,Takshnamurthy Ganesan,Jayachandran Subburaj,Bilavendiran Janifer,Vellaichamy Ramanadevi,Vaithianathan Geetha,Muthusamy Thangaraj,Vijayan Ramya

doi:10.15835/nsb427602

Abstract

Cytochrome c oxidase-1 gene sequences of mitochondrial genome were analyzed for species identification and phylogenetic relationship among the commercially important Nemipterus species. Sequence analysis of COI gene clearly indicated that all the nine fish species fell into distinct clads, which are genetically distant from each other and exhibited identical phylogenetic reservation. All the COI gene sequences provide sufficient phylogenetic information and evolutionary relationship to distinguish the nine Nemipterus species unambiguously. As per the neighbour-joining (NJ) and maximum likelihood (ML) trees, all the nine species are genetically distant from each other and exhibited identical phylogenetic reservation. Based on the NJ and ML phylogenetic trees N. mesoprion, N. zysron, N. hexodon, N. nematophorus, N. virgatus and N. bipunctatus were closely related with high bootstrap value (97). The overall mean Kimura two parameter (K2P) distances between the nine species was 0.109. The intra species K2P distance was high in N. japonicus (0.069) followed by N. peronii (0.050) and N. mesoprion (0.002). This study proves the use of mtDNA COI gene sequence based approach is an alternative tool for identifying fish species at a faster pace.

Highlights

The threadfin breams, called pink perch constitute an important demersal finfish resource in the Indian EEZ
Threadfin breams are one of the most dominant components among the demersal fisheries of India being exploited by commercial trawlers and available all the entire year (Russell, 1990)
Taxonomic ambiguity exists for juvenile and pre-adult fishes and it may lead to another synonym to a fish species

Summary

Introduction

The threadfin breams, called pink perch constitute an important demersal finfish resource in the Indian EEZ. These fishes are abundant beyond 50 m but show higher concentration at 100-200 m depth as revealed by the exploratory surveys and experimental fishing (Murty et al, 2001). Threadfin bream’s catches are usually mixed in India with representation of three or more species of genus Nemipterus (Murty et al, 2001). They are rarely reported as separate species because of problems in proper identification (Pawar et al, 2011). Earlier studies have demonstrated that the COI gene is appropriate and accepted as a universal barcode for discriminating between closely related species across diverse animal phyla and this has been used for marine and freshwater fishes (Hebert et al, 2003; Hubert et al, 2008; Lakra et al, 2011; Ward et al, 2005)

Methods

Results

Conclusion