Limia mandibularis, a new livebearing fish of the family Poeciliidae is described from Lake Miragoane in southwestern Haiti on Hispaniola. The new species differs from all other species in the genus Limia by the presence of a well-developed lower jaw, the absence of preorbital and preopercular pores, and preorbital and preopercular canals forming an open groove each. The description of this new Limia species from Lake Miragoane confirms this lake as an important center of endemism for the genus with a total of nine described species so far.
Objective
The Caribbean is an important global biodiversity hotspot. Adaptive radiations there lead to many speciation events within a limited period and hence are particularly prominent biodiversity generators. A prime example are freshwater fish of the genus Limia, endemic to the Greater Antilles. Within Hispaniola, nine species have been described from a single isolated site, Lake Miragoâne, pointing towards extraordinary sympatric speciation. This study examines the evolutionary history of the Limia species in Lake Miragoâne, relative to their congeners throughout the Caribbean.
Results
For 12 Limia species, we obtained almost complete sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene, a well-established marker for lower-level taxonomic relationships. We included sequences of six further Limia species from GenBank (total N = 18 species). Our phylogenies are in concordance with other published phylogenies of Limia. There is strong support that the species found in Lake Miragoâne in Haiti are monophyletic, confirming a recent local radiation. Within Lake Miragoâne, speciation is likely extremely recent, leading to incomplete lineage sorting in the mtDNA. Future studies using multiple unlinked genetic markers are needed to disentangle the relationships within the Lake Miragoâne clade.
Feeding is relevant to every aspect of animal life and is tightly linked to the ecological niche a species occupies. In concordance with the enormous diversity found in teleost fishes, feeding specialisations are also abundant in this group. One example for this is the order Cyprinodontiformes. This is the most diverse and speciose order of freshwater fishes within the Atherinomorphae. More than 1350 species are known in this order, which are distributed in temperate and tropical regions of the world usually inhabiting shallow freshwater environments or coastal brackish waters (Malabarba & Malabarba, 2020). The Cyprinodontiformes contain approximately
The Caribbean is one of the most important biodiversity hotspots on the planet due to the high level of species diversity and endemism in plants and animals. As elsewhere, adaptive radiations in the Caribbean lead to many speciation events within a limited period and hence are particularly prominent biodiversity generators. The general prediction from Island Biogeography that relates species richness to island size is valid for livebearing fishes in general in the Greater Antilles, where larger islands have higher numbers of species mainly due to in situ speciation. A prime example of this speciation process can be seen in the genus Limia, endemic to the Greater Antilles. Within Hispaniola, nine species have been described from a single isolated site, Lake Miragoâne, pointing towards extraordinary sympatric speciation in Limia. Few studies have examined the evolutionary history of the fishes found in Lake Miragoâne. Here, we address the gaps in present knowledge by providing a preliminary phylogeny of Limia and testing whether the species found in Lake Miragoâne may originated from an in situ radiation. We targeted the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene, a well-established marker for lower-level taxonomic relationships for which we obtained almost complete sequences for 13 species. The general topology of the phylogenies we produced are in concordance with other published phylogenies of Limia. There is also strong support that the species found in Lake Miragoâne in Haiti are indeed monophyletic (BS=97; PP=1.0), confirming the hypothesis of a recent local radiation. Within Lake Miragoâne, speciation is likely extremely recent, leading to incomplete lineage sorting in the mtDNA. Future studies are needed using multiple unlinked genetic markers to disentangle the relationships within the Lake Miragoâne clade.
Within the Caribbean region Lake Miragoane in southwestern Haiti represents one of the most important radiation centers of livebearing fishes of the subfamily Poeciliinae. However, there is a lack of scientific studies documenting the distribution, number of species and conservation status of the fishes from that lake. In this work, an annotated list of livebearing fishes, the most well represented group of aquatic vertebrates in Lake Miragoane, is presented with the corresponding species identification and images. This is the first study in the last 40 years to capture most of the fish diversity in the lake originated from the subgenus Limia and especially in the species flock represented by the subgenus Odontolimia. It also includes two recently described species: Limia islai and L. mandibularis. Here we also report some conservation threats to the endemic freshwater fish fauna from Lake Miragoane that should be addressed to preserve the biodiversity in this important area.
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