Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 281, Issue 1797, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.1068
Keywords
endemism; coral reef fish; mitochondrial genetic diversity; range size; vulnerability
Categories
Funding
- French National Agency for Marine Protected Area
- Contrat de Projet Etat-Territoire in French Polynesia through the project 'CORALSPOT'
- IFRECOR in French Polynesia
- French Ministry for Research and High Education
- French Ministry for Ecology and Sustainable Development
- Marie Curie Actions fellowship
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Endemic species are frequently assumed to have lower genetic diversity than species with large distributions, even if closely related. This assumption is based on research from the terrestrial environment and theoretical evolutionary modelling. We test this assumption in the marine environment by analysing the mitochondrial genetic diversity of 33 coral reef fish species from five families sampled from Pacific Ocean archipelagos. Surprisingly, haplotype and nucleotide diversity did not differ significantly between endemic and widespread species. The probable explanation is that the effective population size of some widespread fishes locally is similar to that of many of the endemics. Connectivity across parts of the distribution of the widespread species is probably low, so widespread species can operate like endemics at the extreme or isolated parts of their range. Mitochondrial genetic diversity of many endemic reef fish species may not either limit range size or be a source of vulnerability.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available