Journal Article
Sympatric morphotypes of the restricted‑range Tashan Cave Garra: distinct species or a case of phenotypic plasticity?
Hashemzadeh Segherloo, I., Najafi Chaloshtory, S., Naser, M.D., Yasser, A.G., Tabatabaei, S.N., Piette‑Lauziere, G., Mashtizadeh, A., Elmi, A., Sedighi, O., Changizi, A., Hallerman, E. and Bernatchez
Record Number:
5968
Year:
2022
Journal:
Environmental Biology of Fishes
Pages:
1251-1260
Volume:
105
Abstract:
Abstract Among Tashan cave barb Garra tashanensis
inhabiting a small cave in southwest Iran,
two mental disc (sucking mouth disc) forms were
observed. To assess their phylogenetic relationships,
disc-less and disc-bearing individuals were analyzed
using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit
I (COI) partial DNA sequences. Both mental disc
forms nested within one clade with absolute bootstrap
support (BS = 100), and the genetic distances between
the disc-bearing and disc-less individuals (0.3–0.8%)
were considerably lower than inter-species mtDNA
sequence distances reported among members of the
genus Garra; further, most species delimitation algorithms
used here showed disc-bearing and disc-less Tashan cave barbs to be members of a single taxonomic
unit. Hence, the observed mental disc variation
was not inferred to be a taxonomic feature or a consequence
of character displacement. Instead, it was
inferred to be a case of character release to diversify
among ecological niches in the limited subterranean
habitat or a case of relaxed selection, which should be
clarified in detail in follow-up ecological and population
genetic studies.
Keywords Character displacement · Character
release · Garra tashanensis · Tashan Cave ·
Taxonomic feature
Times Cited:
3