Morphometric variation of the Herichthys bartoni (Bean, 1892) species group (Teleostei: Cichlidae): How many species comprise H. labridens (Pellegrin, 1903)?

Efraín de Luna,Omar Mejía,Yatzil León-Romero,Eduardo Soto-Galera,Fabián Pérez-Miranda

doi:10.1590/1982-0224-20140067

Efraín de Luna, Omar Mejía + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-0224-20140067

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Abstract

Cichlids of the tribe Heroini have long been a source of taxonomical conflict. In particular, the species included in the Herichthys bartoni group have failed to be recovered as monophyletic in different molecular studies. In this paper we use traditional and geometric morphometrics to evaluate morphological variation in the species included in the H. bartoni complex in order to evaluate the number of species it contains. An update of a previously published DNA barcoding study suggests the existence of three genetic clusters that included the six recognized species analyzed in this study, none of them recovered as monophyletic. On the other hand, geometric morphometrics arise as a useful tool to discriminate species due that traditional morphometrics showed a high overlap in the characters analyzed that prevents the proposal of diagnostic characters.

Highlights

Aquatic environments can show great spatial and temporal variations in both biotic and abiotic parameters
Phylogenetic group I includes H. bartoni and H. labridens, phylogenetic group II includes H. steindachneri and H. pame and phylogenetic group III includes H. pantostictus and the individuals considered in this study as H. cf. labridens, which we synonymize into H. molango
In the ANCOVA for the data adjusted using the Mossimann method, H. bartoni differs from the rest of the species in the postorbital length (POL), H. labridens differs from the rest of the species in the standard length (SLE), height of the head at the preopercle (HHP) and intraocular distance (IOD) and H. pame differs from the rest of the species in the total length (TLE), standard length (SLE), total length of the dorsal fin (LDF), total length of the dorsal fin of spines (DFE), predorsal length (PDL), preanal length (PAL), length of the caudal peduncle (LCP), length of the ascending premaxillary process (LPP) and length of the post ascending premaxillary process (PPP) (Table S2)

Summary

Introduction

Aquatic environments can show great spatial and temporal variations in both biotic and abiotic parameters. Recent phylogenetic studies have confirmed the monophyly of the genus but not of the species included in it (Hulsey et al, 2004; Concheiro-Pérez et al, 2007; Říčan et al, 2008; Říčan et al, 2013) because the two different haplotypes of H. labridens were recovered as polyphyletic. These works suggested the existence of two groups of species that were corroborated with the use of other molecular markers (Říčan et al, 2008; Mejía et al, 2012; Říčan et al, 2013) and morphometric characters

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