Genetic and morphological divergence in the purple sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus (Echinodermata, Echinoidea) across the African Mediterranean coast

Biometric characteristics of the wild population of sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus (Lamarck, 1816) on the Tunisian coast

“…Finally, this investigation about biometric characteristics of the wild population of P. lividus allowed us to discern a metric and weight variation between populations from Tunisia shore and to describe two divergent groups assigned to two parts of the Mediterranean basin. This finding is in accordance with a previous study which reported a phenotypic divergence of Paracentrotus lividus across the Siculo-Tunisian Strait and a significant genetic differentiation between populations from the eastern and western Mediterranean (Deli et al 2017).…”

“…On the other hand, investigations from biometric traits and population structures on the Tunisian coast are rare. Only Deli et al (2017) have explored some morphological divergence of the species across the African Mediterranean coast. Given the scarcity of information on the P. lividus population in Tunisia, this study is devoted to the biometric characterization and structure of the species population along the Tunisian shore.…”

First insight of genetic diversity, phylogeographic relationships, and population structure of marine sponge Chondrosia reniformis from the eastern and western Mediterranean coasts of Tunisia

“…The current C. reniformis populations are subdivided into two major clades: Western and Eastern Mediterranean coasts. The same pattern of genetic differentiation has been previously observed in other Tunisian species, such as: the caramote prawn Penaeus kerathurus (Zitari-Chatti et al, 2008), the brackish fish Pomatoschistus tortonesei (Mejri et al, 2009), the green crab Carcinus aestuarii (Deli et al, 2015), the banded Murex Hexaplex trunculus (Marzouk et al, 2016), and the black sea urchin Arbacia lixula (Deli et al, 2017). This pattern seems to be associated with the well-known discontinuous biogeographic zone: the Siculo-Tunisian Strait, which separates two The AMOVA test of Tunisian C. reniformis sponge revealed that 46.47% of the genetic variation was detected between the four studied groups.…”

“…Compared with the previous data, this value was higher than that detected in other marine sponges (Andreakis et al, 2012;Becking et al, 2013;DeBiasse et al, 2010;Duran et al, 2004;Duran & Rützler, 2006). This value is also higher than that detected in other marines species in Tunisia: Green crab (Deli et al, 2015(Deli et al, , 2017, Caramote prawn (Zitari-chatti et al, 2009). value for π; H d > 0.5 and 0.5-0.8% < π ≤ 1%).…”

“…The genetic divergence of populations of Mahres/Kerkennah group compared to those of the north and south of Siculo‐Tunisian strait in the sponge C . reniformis has not been observed for the other marine invertebrate species such as; the caramote prawn (Zitari‐Chatti et al, 2008 , 2009 ), the green, and marbled Crab (Deli et al, 2015 , 2017 ). For all these species analyzed, the populations of Gulf of Gabes did not show any differentiation.…”