Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 277, Issue 1687, Pages 1497-1503Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.2111
Keywords
elasmobranch; marine fishes; biodiversity; fisheries; genetic differences; extinction
Categories
Funding
- UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
- Fishmonger's Company
- Great Western Research Fellowship
- MBA Senior Research Fellowship
- NERC [NE/F001878/1, mba010004] Funding Source: UKRI
- Natural Environment Research Council [mba010004, NE/F001878/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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Many sharks and skates are particularly vulnerable to overfishing because of their large size, slow growth, late maturity and low fecundity. In Europe dramatic population declines have taken place in common skate (Dipturus batis L.), one of the largest demersal fish in regional shelf seas, leading to extirpations from substantial parts of its former range. Here we report the discovery of cryptic species in common skate collected from the northeast Atlantic continental shelf. Data from nuclear microsatellite markers indicated two clearly distinct clades and phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences demonstrated monophyly of each one of them. Capture locations showed evidence of strong spatial segregation, with one taxon occurring mainly in waters off the southern British Isles and around Rockall, while the other was restricted to more northerly shelf waters. These apparently cryptic species showed overlapping substrate and depth preferences, but distributional limits were closely related to temperature gradients, potentially indicating thermal limits to their distributions. This discovery of hidden diversity within a large, critically endangered marine vertebrate demonstrates how marine biodiversity can be underestimated, even in such a relatively well-studied and heavily exploited region.
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