Abstract
Planktonic larvae were captured in the shallow Vellar estuary, Tamilnadu, India, during January to June 2013 using zooplankton net. Larvae were identified to the species level by comparison with Genbank data base using MtDNA sequence data. Further analysis showed that there is no sequence variation within-species, whereas between-species variation was more than 25%, supporting the suitability for species identification. The highest genetic distance was observed between A. nigropunctatus and M. cephalus (0.434) and the lowest genetic distance was observed between T. jarbua and S. commersoni (0.256). Given the current worldwide interest in DNA barcoding and species identification using MtDNA gene marker (CO1), it was confirmed the efficacy of the Fish-F1 and -R1 primer set, which gave the possibility for identification of finfish larvae at species level.
Highlights
In the early life history of fishes, many species share the same morphology and their morphometric measurements are often duplicated (Victor et al, 2009)
The objective of this study is to identify some dominant fish larvae in Vellar estuary upto species level using CO1 gene and find the phylogenetic relationship among them
Among these 456 larvae, four morphotypes were segregated based on the morphological characters and proceeded for molecular identification to confirm to species level
Summary
In the early life history of fishes, many species share the same morphology and their morphometric measurements are often duplicated (Victor et al, 2009). The larval fish has always been identified by morphological characters, such as the body shape, pigmentation, meristic count and measurements. These characters are not enough to identify each species, especially those are rare and cryptic (Matarese et al, 2011). The morphology of the same species can change quickly and significantly during its development from preflexion larvae to postflexion and to the pre-juvenile stage, when the fish settles down. The same species at different developmental stages may be identified as several different species when using just morphological characters (Ko et al, 2013). The basic characters normally employed for the identification of finfish larvae belonging to various families are the shape of the body, shape of the gut, position of anal opening, type of alimentary canal, arrangement of muscle fibres, number of myotomes, origin and position of paired and unpaired fins besides changing pattern of pigmentation etc. (Sundaramanickam, 2004)
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