Museum Fur Research Articles

Analysis of the Mitochondrial Genomes of Japanese Wolf Specimens in the Siebold Collection, Leiden.

The taxonomic status of extinct Japanese or Honshu wolves (Canis lupus hodophilax) has been disputed since the name hodophilax was first proposed by Temminck in 1839 on the basis of specimens stored in Leiden, the Netherlands. Points of controversy include whether the type specimen of hodophilax (Jentink c: RMNH.MAM.39181) and the other two specimens from Leiden (Jentink a: RMNH.MAM.39182 and Jentink b: RMNH.MAM.39183) represent different varieties or subspecies of Japanese wolves or not. Two Japanese names, ookami and jamainu, used to describe wild Canis species, further complicate the issue. In this study, the taxonomic status of Japanese wolves was clarified using mitochondrial DNA of the three specimens stored at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, in addition to three Japanese wolf specimens stored at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and five new samples from Japan. The mitochondrial genomes of the type specimen of hodophilax (Jentink c) and another sample from Leiden (Jentink b) as well as Berlin specimens were included in the cluster of Japanese wolves distinct from other grey wolves. However, the other sample from Leiden (Jentink a) was identified as a domestic dog. A mitochondrial genome analysis suggested that Japanese wolves could be categorized into two distinct clusters. Studies of nuclear genomes are needed to further clarify the taxonomic status, divergence time, and population genetic structure of Japanese wolves.

Remarks on two poorly known Dionycha spiders from the Afrotropical Region (Araneae: Cheiracanthiidae, Liocranidae)

Embrik Strand described a large number of spiders from the Afrotropical Region. We examined the type specimens of two poorly known species from the Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin, which have never been redescribed or illustrated. Clubiona ruandana Strand, 1916 (Clubionidae) is misplaced and its transfer to CheiracanthiumWagner, 1887 (Cheiracanthiidae) is proposed, based on a redescription of the female holotype, making it the sixth Cheiracanthium species recorded from Rwanda. The female holotype of Corinna nossibeensisStrand, 1907 (Corinnidae) is imaged and the species is synonymized with Oedignatha scrobiculataThorell, 1881 (Liocranidae), representing the first record of this genus and species from Madagascar.

Spatio-Temporal Color Differences Between Urban and Rural Populations of a Ground Beetle During the Last 100 Years

Increasing anthropogenic environmental impacts lead to rapid transitions of ecosystems and species. Species persisting in changing environments may respond to changes by altering phenotypic traits across space and/or time. Here we tested whether the frequencies of three color morphs in the ground beetle Harpalus affinis differed across spatial and temporal gradients. The gradients extended from urban to rural regions, and from the early 20th century until today, in the Berlin-Brandenburg area, Germany. Specimens comprised beetles from the entomological collection of the Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin and recently collected material. As a result of differing environments, we expected to observe differences in color frequencies in beetles between habitats and across time, responding to different levels of urbanization. Our results revealed sexual dichromatism in H. affinis as well as some habitat dependent differences in trait frequency. Frequencies of color morphs remained generally constant in males across space and time. Females likewise showed no differences in color frequencies between habitats, urban and rural regions, and between different time periods in rural regions. In contrast color morph frequencies changed in urban regions over time in females: Bronze color decreased, whereas green color became more dominant over time. We assume that bronze color was selectively advantageous in times with high levels of soot pollution in the city, whereas green is more cryptic and thus advantageous in times with less polluted air. The color change of females thus could have been driven by natural selection. In contrast, the persistence of predominately green males through all times and habitats, more likely can be explained by sexual selection.

Between Re-production and Re-presentation: The Implementation of Photographic Art Reproduction in the Documentation of Museum Collections Online

Museums extend their visibility beyond the physical institutions by providing online collections. By doing this, the museums seek to make a whole collection accessible to visitors online and, as a result, to make the cultural heritage accessible to a broader spectrum of society. Although the collections are represented under the inherent conditions of the graphical user interface, online collections are based on earlier forms of representation, and have implemented their principles. To find precursors and influences on current online collections the following research questions are discussed: What influence has photography had on the inventory processes and the visibility of museum collections? What kind of remaking happened with the combination of text and image in classifying systems at the turn of the 20th century? What effect has this early remake had on current online collections?This article explores one early remaking of a museum collection. The Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (The Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg) started to use photography as an addition to text based classification systems. Contemporaneously the photographic reproductions were used as an illustration for the depicted museum objects in publications. The first employee of the museum, Wilhelm Weimar, primarily made sketches of museum objects and in 1897 started to photograph them. As a result 1700 glass plate negatives in three different sizes were produced, which mainly show museum objects or details of them. In this article the photographic art reproduction on glass plate negatives from Wilhelm Weimar are analyzed. In a second step the history of index cards introduces a classification system that became omnipresent in libraries and all kind of offices since the late 19th century. In the Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg index cards were illustrated with images, and prints mounted on cardboard provided more accessible representations of the depicted objects, which were held in storage.

Product of the art market? The representation of silver corncobs at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin

In the 1960s two similar silver corncobs attributed to the Chimu-Inca period were sold by New York based art dealers to the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, now the Ethnologisches Museum, and to the Denver Art Museum. The composition of the Berlin piece shows the use of different alloys, suggesting the reuse of different pre-Columbian objects. Only the hard-solders used to join the different parts of the corncobs contain an amount of zinc that might indicate a modern intervention. The hypothesis of this article is that economic stability in the 1960s combined with the desire to restore Second World War losses in museums collections particularly in Germany paved the way for doubtable purchases including forgeries.

Rediscovery of type material of the bioerosional trace fossil Talpina von Hagenow, 1840 and its ichnotaxonomic implications

Friedrich von Hagenow is renowned for his seminal inventory of the diverse invertebrate fauna from the lower Maastrichtian chalk (Upper Cretaceous) of the Isle of Rugen, Germany. Tragically, his immense collection at Stettin (today Szczecin, Poland) was almost completely destroyed during World War II, including the type material of hundreds of species established by him during the first half of the 19th century. Seven belemnite specimens from his collection rediscovered at the Museum fur Naturkunde Berlin, as well as 14 belemnites traced at the Museum fur Mineralogie und Geologie at the Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden, include syntypes of four Talpina ichnospecies, labelled T. ramosa, T. solitaria, T. foliacea and T. sentiformis. To document this material, a new ‘digital cylinder seal technique’ was applied. The rediscovered material allows lectotype designations for T. ramosa and T. solitaria (now Trypanites solitarius), whereas T. foliacea and T. sentiformis, which where not formally published by von Hagenow, are regarded as nomina nuda. As a consequence, the non-topotypical neotypes of T. ramosa and T. solitaria, as designated by Ehrhard Voigt in 1972, are obsolete.

Traveling Houses: Performing Diasporic Relationships in Europe

The paper explores the mutual impact of Pacific houses and people in diasporic relationships. Tracing the fates of several whare and fale now located in Europe, it explores changes over time that resulted from different degrees of closeness or distance between the people gathered around them. Three houses feature prominently in the paper: Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito in Clandon Park (close to London, UK); Rauru at the Museum fur Volkerkunde (Hamburg, Germany); and a fale from Apia at the Tropical Islands Resort (close to Berlin, Germany). They enjoy and have historically enjoyed different degrees of connection with their source communities, which, I suggest, directly impact their role and state of being in their current locations. What their stories show is that identities and angles of vision change in particular ways during processes of colonization and globalization. These changes are relevant for local and global cultural developments and their role in cultural tourism, but also for the consideration of global identities generally. Together, Pacific notions of generative (rather than objectifying) relationships between people, and Benjamin’s notion of a performative relationship between present and past opening new angles and future possibilities, suggest that present and past relationships can be redeemed.

Turfan Manuscripts in the State Hermitage - a Rediscovery

He article presents the results of a close cooperation of colleagues from the State Hermitage and the Gottingen Academy of Sciences (Union Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts). 23 fragments of manuscripts and block prints in five different languages (Chinese, Old Uighur, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Syriac) are described in detail. Almost all of them could be identified. They stem from the four German Turfan expeditions (1902- 1914) and were housed in the Museum fur Volkerkunde (Berlin) for exhibition reasons, i.e. they belong to the most important findings of these expeditions. Nevertheless some of these fragments have never been published before. For a long time it was thought that they belong to the losses during World War II. Now they have been re-discovered in the depot of the State Hermitage. In the appendix an Old Uighur fragment of the Sakiz Yukmak Yaruk is edited. It belongs to the re-discovered texts and was known up-to-now only from some quotations in an early edition.

A Commented Synopsis of the Pre-Pleistocene Fossil Record of Carex (Cyperaceae)

Despite the existence of a rich record, fossils of Carex have been largely neglected by neobotanists. Here we present an exhaustive critically commented checklist of the so-far published pre-Pleistocene records ascribed to Carex. We have made every attempt to include all pertinent paleobotanical literature. The extensive collection of the Museum fur Naturkunde (Berlin, Germany) has also been studied. We found that up to 83 names belonging to different Carex groups may be applied to reliable remains, plus another 23 names of doubtful remains. These fossils come from more than 550 sites, mainly from C and E Europe and the Russian Federation. The age of the reliable fossil record ranges from the Eocene to recent times. Problems detected on the taxonomy, age and naming of these fossils are discussed. We hope that this work will stimulate neobotanical and paleobotanical communities to work together on broad-scope systematic projects as this one.

Annotated type catalogue of the continental fossil gastropods in the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract The type specimens of fossil land and freshwater gastropods deposited in the Staatliches Museum fur Naturkunde Stuttgart (SMNS), Germany, are listed and illustrated herein, comprising circa 180 nominal species-group taxa from Cenozoic fossil sites, mainly in the Baden-Wurttemberg and Bayern states in southern Germany. The list is arranged in alphabetical order of the specific epithets, with information on the original description, taxonomical status, type locality, record number in the collection and comments. A systematically arranged list of the taxa is also given, as well as a list arranged by authorship of the species-group names. At least one type specimen (holotype, lectotype, syntype or neotype) of each nominal species/subspecies is figured here, and further specimens were figured when they added information. In some cases lectotypes are designated herein.

Data Policy Recommendations for Biodiversity Data. EU BON Project Report

There is a strong need for a comprehensive, coherent, and consistent data policy in ‐ Europe to increase interoperability of data and to make its reuse both easy and legal. Available single recommendations/guidelines on different topics need to be processed, structured, and unified. Within the context of the EU BON project, a team from the EU BON partners from Museum fur Naturkunde Berlin, Plazi, and Pensoft has prepared this report to be used as a part of the Data Publishing Guidelines and Recommendations in the EU BON Biodiversity Portal. The document deals with the issues: (i) Mobilizing biodiversity data, (ii) Removing legal obstacles, (iii) Changing attitudes, (iv) Data policy recommendations and is addressed to legislators, researchers, research institutions, data aggregators, funders, and publishers.

Intraspecific variation in fossil vertebrate populations: Fossil killifishes (Actinopterygii: Cyprinodontiformes) from the Oligocene of Central Europe

A quantification of intraspecific variation in morphological traits is necessary not only as a basis for taxonomic work but also to understand a basic aspect of evolution. Comparisons among species could reveal differences in plasticity in development among them and even give clues on evolvability. Studies of this kind are rare for extinct species of vertebrates given the lack of adequate samples, but there are notable exceptions. Morphometric and meristic data were collected for three species of fossil killifish in order to quantify intraspecific variation: 67 specimens of Prolebias rhenanus from the Lower Oligocene of Baden-Wurttemberg, 40 specimens of Pr. stenoura from the Lower Oligocene of Puy-de-Dome, and 141 specimens of Paralebias cephalotes from the Upper Oligocene of Aix-en-Provence. Nearly identical patterns of intraspecific variation exist between the two species of Prolebias. Fin base lengths and precaudal lengths of the vertebral column are the most variable traits in both species, followed by pterygiophore counts, then other axial length measurements and, least variable, vertebral counts. In neither species was there a significant difference in observed variation between fin and vertebral or meristic and morphometric traits. The only significant correlation shared between the two species is the positive relationship between caudal length of the vertebral column and length of the anal fin base. Precaudal length of the vertebral column is less variable in Paralebias than in Prolebias, while precaudal vertebral count is more variable, in absolute values of the coefficient of variation. Variability in elongation of precaudal vertebrae may be the underlying cause of the absence of correlation between decreased variation in precaudal length of the vertebral column and increased variation in precaudal count in Paralebias cephalotes. We report more similar patterns of variation among Prolebias congeners than between Prolebias and Paralebias, suggesting that trait variability is changing over evolutionary time in this actinopterygian lineage. Linda Frey. Palaeontological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Karl-Schmid-Str. 4, CH-8006, Switzerland. linda.frey@pim.uzh.ch Erin E. Maxwell. Staatliches Museum fur Naturkunde, Rosenstein 1, DE-70191 Stuttgart, Germany. erin.maxwell@smns-bw.de Frey, Linda, Maxwell, Erin E., and Sanchez-Villagra, Marcelo R. 2016. Intraspecific variation in fossil vertebrate populations: Fossil killifishes (Actinopterygii: Cyprinodontiformes) from the Oligocene of Central Europe. Palaeontologia Electronica 19.2.14A: 1-27 palaeo-electronica.org/content/2016/1464-fossil-killifishes-from-europe Copyright: © May 2016 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ FREY, MAXWELL, & SANCHEZ-VILLAGRA: FOSSIL KILLIFISHES FROM EUROPE Marcelo R. Sanchez-Villagra. Palaeontological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Karl-SchmidStr. 4, CH-8006, Switzerland. m.sanchez@pim.uzh.ch (corresponding author)

Juan Cristóbal Gundlach’s collections of Puerto Rican birds with special regard to types

The German naturalist Juan Cristobal Gundlach (1810–1896) conducted, while a resident of Cuba, two expeditions to Puerto Rico in 1873 and 1875–6, where he explored the southwestern, western, and northeastern regions of this island. Gundlach made repre­ sentative collections of the island’s fauna, which formed the nucleus of the first natural history museums in Puerto Rico. When the natural history museums closed, only a few specimens were passed to other institutions, including foreign museums. None of Gund­ lach’s and few of his contemporaries’ specimens have survived in Puerto Rico. We lo­ cated 191 bird specimens (43 species) collected there by Gundlach, all of which are in foreign institutions, especially Museum fur Naturkunde Berlin. Here we list all located specimens and include data associated with them. Six new species were described out of the Gundlach collections from Puerto Rico, three of which are still taxonomically recog­ nized today. Information about the types of those taxa is given.

Reply to “Ichthyosaur embryos outside the mother body: not due to carcass explosion but to carcass implosion” by van Loon (2013)

In his recent discussion on the taphonomy of ichthyosaurs, van Loon (2013) supported—at least partially—the view of Reisdorf et al. (2012) and emphasized that explosion of vertebrate carcasses on the sea floor should not be considered as a taphonomically reasonable scenario. Carcass explosion is thus not a process that can be used to explain both the disarticulation of certain ichthyosaur skeletons and the displacement of their bones in the geological record. Van Loon (2013), however, did suggest that, as an alternative hypothesis, implosion could have led to the displacement of bones on the sea floor. Van Loon (2013) focussed his explanation of the implosion hypothesis on the example of a maternal ichthyosaur having embryonic ichthyosaurs around and within its body cavity (Staatliches Museum fur Naturkunde Stuttgart, specimen number SMNS 50 007). Reisdorf et al. (2012) outlined that

Gothic ivory carvings at the British Museum

The project to catalogue the British Museum's ivory carvings for the Courtauld Institute of Art's Gothic Ivories Project was a timely opportunity to begin a reappraisal of this excellent collection. This process took place over a two-year period from 2009, during which 187 Gothic ivories from the late medieval collection were catalogued, providing a springboard for renewed research into the collection. New photography of the pieces was commissioned, resulting in high-resolution images of the carvings being made available on the museum's online catalogue in addition to the Gothic Ivories Project. The ivories were measured and weighed, their bibliographies updated and their iconography classified to fit the terminology of the project database. Certain areas of the collection have also received increased study, particularly secular carvings, nineteenth-century objects (both emulations and forgeries) and the collecting history of medieval ivories at the museum. The success of this partnership has led to an Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Award between the British Museum and the Courtauld Institute of Art specifically to work on the corpus.This investigation into the museum's ivories focuses primarily on three key areas: provenance and collecting history; forgeries; and the review of the dates and locations of manufacture. Since the work of O.M. Dalton in 1909, there has not been a complete study of the British Museum's ivory carvings, and many pieces continue to be catalogued internally with Dalton's conclusion that they were French and fourteenth century.1 On the subject of Paris, Dalton wrote 'the majority of the ivories produced in the 14th century may have been assigned to the source'.2 Over a century later it is clear that a review of this scholarship is long overdue.Publishing the carvings through the Gothic Ivories Project has brought new insights into the collection, particularly by drawing parallels with pieces in other institutions. Current research on knife handles has revealed two pieces which correspond with the youth holding a falcon type identified by Mogens Bencard in his study of 24 such carvings in bone and ivory.3 We can add to Bencard's corpus two examples from the British Museum (inv. nos. 1867,0320.17 and 1856,0701.1507) along with two others brought to light through the Gothic Ivories Project: one from the Historisches Museum, Basel (inv. no. 1928,837) and another from the Skulpturensammlung und Museum fur Byzantinische Kunst, Berlin (inv. no. 06/58). Drawing together these ivory and bone pieces in English, Swiss and German collections with those Bencard had catalogued, which were predominantly from Danish archaeo- logical origins, provides valuable insight into the use and manufacture of these carvings. This enlarged corpus of the youth-with-falcon type also suggests the relatively widespread distribution of this knife handle motif, predominantly within northern Europe, as no examples are currently known to originate from Italy or Spain.The period from 1831 to 1871 was the most active for the purchase of ivory carvings at the British Museum, and studying the motivations behind these purchases has already yielded some interesting findings. During those four decades, around half of the present collection was acquired. Of particular importance was the collection of William Maskell (1814-90), a liturgical scholar from whom the museum purchased 170 ivories, nearly half of which are Gothic in style.4 The provenance of these pieces remains a mystery, and very little is known about their origins other than their date of formal acquisition into the institution on 23 June 1856. The museum's archive, which includes Maskell's own notes on his collection, has provided the starting point for an investigation into the provenance of these pieces, and has yielded important new information. One recent discovery is Maskell's purchase of a number of ivories from the Amiens collector M. …

Description ofMoniliformis kalahariensis(Acanthocephala: Moniliformidae) from the South African Hedgehog,Atelerix frontalis(Erinaceidae) in South Africa

Moniliformis kalahariensis Meyer, 1931 (Moniliformida Schmidt, 1972: Moniliformidae Van Cleave, 1924) is redescribed from long, unsegmented juveniles and pseudosegmented mature adults collected from the South African hedgehog Atelerix frontalis Smith, 1831 (Erinaceidae) in South Africa. The species has not been taxonomically treated since Meyer's original description of only segmented adults from the same host, A. frontalis, as well as from the unusual host, the Namaqua sandgrouse, Pterocles namaqua (Gmelin, 1789) (Pteroclididae), in Botswana and from cystacanths from Blattella (Phyllodromia) germanica Linnaeus, 1767 (Blattidae Karny, 1908) in Bombay, India. Despite the generous space Meyer devoted to the description of mature adults of M. kalahariensis in 1931, and his shorter description in 1932, both accounts lacked considerable important information. We examined some of Meyer's original adults and cystacanths from Berlin's Museum fur Naturkunde by optical microscopy and by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Meyer did not measure or illustrate the proboscis hooks but reported 14 hook rows with 9-10 hooks each in his adult and cystacanth specimens. The proboscis of our juvenile and adult specimens from South Africa had 16 hook rows each with 9-11 hooks. One adult from Meyer's specimens that we examined using SEM had at least 16 proboscis hook rows, and one of his cystacanths had 14 hook rows each with 10-12 hooks. Our report provides new illustrations and morphometric data of the long juvenile and mature adults and gives the full range of measurements of proboscis armature. We further describe, for the first time, the 2 apical pores on the proboscis in all stages; the proboscis hooks and their lateral slits and the spiniform hooks in adult worms; hook roots; the reproductive system in both males and females (only the size and placement of testes were reported and an egg was illustrated by Meyer in 1931 and 1932); sensory pores; and the sensory plates near the posterior end of adult males. Lastly, we also describe the large unsegmented juveniles to which Meyer made no reference.

Origin and identity of the von Borcke collection of amphibians and reptiles in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin: A cache of Seba specimens?

Approximately 150 specimens of amphibians and reptiles donated by Graf von Borcke in the first years of the museum's existence are still present in the Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin (ZMB). Based on information published by Blasius Merrem and additional historical sources, it can be determined that a portion of von Borcke's collection was purchased from the estate of Willem Xaver Janssen (= Wilhelm Xaver Jansen) and that this was probably obtained indirectly (possibly via Adrianus van Royen) from the second collection of Albertus Seba, auctioned in 1752. Comparison of the von Borcke material with Seba's illustrations reveals five credible and 18 questionable matches. Most convincing is a specimen of Python sebae partly dissected to show a bird in its abdomen. The Seba figure of this specimen is an iconotype of Python bivittatus Kuhl, 1820. An additional ten ZMB specimens are possible matches to Seba illustrations that have served as iconotypes. The stylized appearance of many of Seba's figures, particularly those of snakes, makes the unambiguous identification of surviving Seba specimens difficult. In addition, five snake specimens are probable matches to specimens from Janssen's collection that were described and figured by Merrem. Three of these are type specimens of subsequently described species, including the widespread and invasive Boiga irregularis (Bechstein, 1802). A combination of historical information and specimen correspondences yields a strong case for the survival of a large part of Seba's herpetological collection in Berlin. (© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Rare, divergent Korean Semisulcospira spp. mitochondrial haplotypes have Japanese sister lineages

O. Miura1, F. Kohler2,3, T. Lee4, J. Li4 and D. O Foighil4 Oceanography Section, Science Research Center, Kochi University, 200 Monobe, Nankoku, Kochi 783-8502, Japan; Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia; Museum fur Naturkunde, Invalidenstr. 43, D-10115 Berlin, Germany; and University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, 1109 Geddes Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079, USA

Faunistic spider collections in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin: The collection of Erich Hesse

doi: 10.5431/aramit4409 Abstract: The 'Hesse collection' of spiders (Araneae) and harvestmen (Opiliones) in the Museum fur Naturkunde Berlin is documented. Biographical notes on Erich Hesse - a former arachnid curator at the museum (1921-1940) - are provided. The 'Hesse collection' was actually put together by other workers, and can be broadly divided into two parts. One comes from Bielinek (= Bellinchen) on the Polish side of the Oder Valley (West Pommerania); now part of the 'Unteres Odertal' National Park. This Bielinek material includes notable records of Heriaeus oblongus Simon, 1918 and Gibbaranea ullrichi (Hahn, 1835). The other part of the collection comes from Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Notable here are Pistius truncatus (Pallas, 1772) and Philodromus buchari Kubcova, 2004; the latter representing the first record of this species for Saxony-Anhalt. The arachnological section of the Museum fur Naturkunde Berlin houses a number of, primarily regional, 'special collections' (Sondersammlungen) which are not integrated into the main systematic collection due to their focus on a particular set of localities and/or individuals. These may prove to be of some value for, e.g., regional faunistic studies, and as part of what we hope will be a series of papers documenting these special collections, we begin by focusing on material assembled by the former Berlin curator, Erich Hesse. These specimens were collected during the 1930s from Bielinek in western Poland and Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide in the state of Saxony- Anhalt in Germany.

Genetic structure of the whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus) population inhabiting the Miedwie Lake, Poland, based on partial ND-1 and ITS-1 gene sequences

The aim of this study was to characterize whitefish and peled populations in Miedwie Lake by means of the genetic analysis of ND-1 (NADH dehydrogenase 1) gene and the ITS-1 (internal transcribed spacer 1) region in order to distinguish native forms from whitefish/peled hybrids. In the analysis, archival specimens of Coregonus lavaretus maraena from the Berlin Museum fur Naturkunde were used. Genetic analysis performed with the aid of MEGA 4.0 software explicitly indicated that samples from Miedwie Lake belonged entirely to a native (rapidly growing) form of whitefish. Furthermore, the conducted research has also provided crucial information for a C. lavaretus management program for Miedwie Lake.