Abstract
The rare occurrence of redfish (genus Sebastes) in the White Sea encouraged Rolskii et al. (Polar Biol 43:385–389, 2020) to investigate the species identity of two animals captured near the Sredniy Island at 40 m depth. They reported that their morphological description proved unreliable and that genetic evidence “clearly demonstrated” these redfish belong to S. norvegicus. This was inferred using the S7 and the mitochondrial control region genes. However, while their S7 matched one S. norvegicus reference sequence, the S. norvegicus mitochondrial reference sequences used to infer species identity were previously shown to cluster with S. mentella. Therefore, both of their redfish samples belong to a S. norvegicus × S. mentella (deep-pelagic) hybrid which presents an interesting perspective into the complex species dynamics in this group.
Highlights
North Atlantic (NA) Sebastes are remarkably similar in external appearance and the absence of clear diagnostic morphological characters can obscure an accurate species assessment whereby phenotypic plasticity and hybridisation has blurred morphological limits of detection (Pampoulie and Daníelsdóttir 2008; Christensen et al 2018)
In a following seafood authentication study, Shum et al (2017) used all publicly available NA Sebastes mitochondrial D-loop sequences to identify redfish marketed in Europe and observed a common pattern: all previously published S. norvegicus sequences (Hyde and Vetter 2007; Artamonova et al 2013) consistently clustered within S. mentella
The occurrence of hybrid redfish in the White Sea presents an interesting scenario for North Atlantic Sebastes
Summary
North Atlantic (NA) Sebastes are remarkably similar in external appearance and the absence of clear diagnostic morphological characters can obscure an accurate species assessment whereby phenotypic plasticity and hybridisation has blurred morphological limits of detection (Pampoulie and Daníelsdóttir 2008; Christensen et al 2018). Keywords Sebastes · redfish · hybridisation · White Sea Artamonova et al (2013) documented some of the earliest mitochondrial DNA control region (or D-loop) sequence records for NA Sebastes from a small collection of samples.
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