Abstract
Contemporary patterns of genetic diversity and population connectivity within species can be influenced by both historical and contemporary barriers to gene flow. In the marine environment, present day oceanographic features such as currents, fronts and upwelling systems can influence dispersal of eggs/larvae and/juveniles/adults, shaping population substructuring. The Benguela Current system in the southeastern Atlantic is one of the oldest upwelling systems in the world, and provides a unique opportunity to investigate the relative influence of contemporary and historical mechanisms shaping the evolutionary history of warm-temperate fish species. Using the genetic variation in the mitochondrial DNA Control Region and eight nuclear microsatellite DNA loci, we identified the presence of two highly divergent populations in a vagile and warm-temperate fish species, Atractoscion aequidens, across the Benguela region. The geographical distributions of the two populations, on either side of the perennial upwelling cell, suggest a strong correlation between the oceanographic features of the system and the breakdown of gene flow within this species. Genetic divergence (mtDNA φ ST = 0.902, microsatellite F ST = 0.055: probability of genetic homogeneity for either marker = p<0.001), absence of migrants (less than 1% per generation) between populations and coalescent estimates of time since most recent common ancestor suggest that the establishment of the main oceanographic features of the system (2 million years ago), particularly the strengthening and position of the perennial upwelling cell, is the most likely mechanism behind the observed isolation. Concordance between mitochondrial and nuclear genetic markers indicates that isolation and divergence of the northern and southern Benguela populations of A. aequidens occurred deep in the past and has continued to the present day. These findings suggest that the Benguela Current system may constitute an ancient and impermeable barrier to gene flow for warm-temperate fish species.
Highlights
Contemporary patterns of genetic diversity and population connectivity within species are known to be influenced both by historical population processes, and by historical and present barriers to gene flow [1]
The Benguela Current first formed in the mid-Miocene (12–10 Million years ago – Ma) [19,20], its present day features were established by changes in Atlantic Oceanic circulation patterns resulting from uplift of the Isthmus of Panama and the increase in ice sheet coverage in both northern and southern hemispheres during the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition (2 Ma) [21,22]
Our results present evidence that A. aequidens around southern Africa is composed of two distinct and non-interbreeding populations, the distributions of which appear to coincide with contemporary oceanographic features of the Benguela Current system
Summary
Contemporary patterns of genetic diversity and population connectivity within species are known to be influenced both by historical population processes, and by historical and present barriers to gene flow [1]. Three major events are known to have contributed to environmental changes in the region: i) intensification of the upwelling regime during the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition (2 Ma); ii) severe cooling due to the increase of ice sheet coverage in the mid-Pleistocene (1–0.5 Ma); and iii) establishment of the contemporary Quaternary 40–100 thousand year (Ky) glacialinterglacial cycles (0.5–0.01 Ma) [22,23,24]. Such climatic fluctuations are likely to have contributed to significant changes in demographic histories and population connectivity of coastal fish species. No comprehensive studies have been conducted for species with distributions in both the northern and southern warmtemperate zones
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