Abstract
Vesicomyid bivalves are among the most abundant and diverse symbiotic taxa in chemosynthetic-based ecosystems: more than 100 different vesicomyid species have been described so far. In the present study, we investigated the phylogenetic positioning of recently described vesicomyid species from the Gulf of Guinea and their western Atlantic and Pacific counterparts using mitochondrial DNA sequence data. The maximum-likelihood (ML) tree provided limited support for the recent taxonomic revision of vesicomyids based on morphological criteria; nevertheless, most of the newly sequenced specimens did not cluster with their morphological conspecifics. Moreover, the observed lack of geographic clustering suggests the occurrence of independent radiations followed by worldwide dispersal. Ancestral character state reconstruction showed a significant correlation between the characters “depth” and “habitat” and the reconstructed ML phylogeny suggesting possible recurrent events of ‘stepwise speciation’ from shallow to deep waters in different ocean basins. This is consistent with genus or species bathymetric segregation observed from recent taxonomic studies. Altogether, our results highlight the need for ongoing re-evaluation of the morphological characters used to identify vesicomyid bivalves.
Highlights
Chemosynthetic ecosystems are found worldwide in the deep ocean and harbour specific communities that have a high level of endemism [1]
To many other taxa associated with chemosynthetic ecosystems, vesicomyids have chemoautotrophic bacteria in their gills that use sulphide components and provide their hosts with nutriments, thereby creating symbiotic relationships [5,6,7,8]
We investigated the phylogenetic relationships among recently described vesicomyid species in the Gulf of Guinea and their western Atlantic and Pacific counterparts using mitochondrial DNA cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) sequence data
Summary
Chemosynthetic ecosystems are found worldwide in the deep ocean and harbour specific communities that have a high level of endemism [1]. We investigated the phylogenetic relationships among recently described vesicomyid species in the Gulf of Guinea and their western Atlantic and Pacific counterparts using mitochondrial DNA COI sequence data.
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