No abstract

Over the last two years (2008-2010) we performed a monitoring project to update the Spanish freshwater fish fauna. We have collected in 785 sampling localities homogeneously distributed throughout Spain each year. We find as the most important result of this study the occurrence of several species that constitute new records for some rivers or basins in Spain: Lampetra planeri, Petromyzon marinus, Barbus haasi, Iberochondrostoma lemmingii, Squalius alburnoides, Squalius carolitertii, Squalius malacitanus, Cobitis calderoni, Cobitis paludica, and Salaria fluviatilis. Finally we corroborate the existence of Barbatula barbatula in the Duero basin and the assignation of the northeastern populations of this genus to B. quignardi.

The populations of brook lamprey Lampetra planeri of Portuguese Rivers were analysed phylogeographically using a fragment of 644 bp of the mitochondrial control region of 158 individuals from six populations. Samples representing L. planeri and migratory lampreys Lampetra fluviatilis of rivers draining to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were also included to assess the relationships of Portuguese samples. The data support a clear differentiation of all the populations studied. Several populations, which are isolated among themselves and also from the migratory lampreys, proved to be entirely composed of private haplotypes, a finding that supports some time of independent evolutionary history for these populations. This, combined with the geographic confinement to small water bodies, justifies the recognition of at least four conservation units in the Portuguese rivers Sado, São Pedro, Nabão and Inha.

Pleistocene climate changes have imposed extreme conditions to intertidal rocky marine communities, forcing many species to significant range shifts in their geographical distributions. Phylogeographic analyses based on both mitochondrial and nuclear genetic markers provide a useful approach to unravel phylogeographic patterns and processes of species after this time period, to gain general knowledge of how climatic changes affect shifts in species distributions. We analyzed these patterns on the corkwing wrasse (Symphodus melops, Labridae), a rocky shore species inhabiting North Sea waters and temperate northeastern Atlantic Ocean from Norway to Morocco including the Azores, using a fragment of the mitochondrial control region and the first intron of the nuclear S7 ribosomal protein gene. We found that S. melops shows a clear differentiation between the Atlantic and the Scandinavian populations and a sharp contrast in the genetic diversity, high in the south and low in the north. Within each of these main geographic areas there is little or no genetic differentiation. The species may have persisted throughout the last glacial maximum in the southern areas as paleotemperatures were not lower than they are today in North Scandinavia. The North Sea recolonization most likely took place during the current interglacial and is dominated by a haplotype absent from the south of the study area, but present in Plymouth and Belfast. The possibility of a glacial refugium in or near the English Channel is discussed.