Genetic diversity and population genetic analysis of Donax vittatus (Mollusca: Bivalvia) and phylogeny of the genus with mitochondrial and nuclear markers

Mitochondrial DNA analyses of Donax trunculus (Mollusca: Bivalvia) population structure in the Iberian Peninsula, a bivalve with high commercial importance

“…The genetic homogeneity of the Atlantic localities detected in this study is in accordance with previous results in other marine species on the European Atlantic coast (Couceiro, Barreiro, Ruiz, & Sotka, ; Duran, Palacin, Becerro, Turon, & Giribet, ; Fernández‐Pérez et al, ; Sanjuan et al, ; Triantafyllidis et al, ; Xavier, Santos, & Branco, ). Oceanographic characteristics of the Atlantic coast, among which is a mixing of water bodies (Bowden, ), favour larval exchange, reducing any differentiation among populations of the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula.…”

“…This difference between the two types of mtDNA takes its extreme form in AL, BQ, CR, BS, CL, LI, SI, and FA samples, where the M type did not show polymorphism. This result, greater diversity detected in the F type, has been reported in other studies with DUI species, such as M. galloprovincialis (Ladoukakis et al, ), Musculista senhousia (Passamonti, ), Perumytilus purpuratus (Vargas, Pérez, Toro, & Astorga, ) and Donax vittatus (Fernández‐Pérez et al, ). Differences in variability between the two mitochondrial lineages could respond to the older evolutionary history of the F genome than the M genome (Vargas et al, ).…”

“…A 447 bp fragment of the 16S F type was amplified with the universal primer 16AR (Kocher et al, ) and reverse primer DT16S‐R395 (Theologidis et al, ), while a 413 bp fragment of the 16S M type was amplified with the specific primers DT16SM‐F and DT16SM‐R (Fernández‐Pérez et al, ). A 432 bp fragment of the Cytb gene (F and M sequences) was amplified with the specific primers DTCYTB‐F and DTCYTB‐R (Theologidis et al, ) (see Table for detailed information on primers).…”

“…However, an extreme exception to the typical maternal inheritance of mtDNA in Metazoa is found in some bivalve lineages, which possess a peculiar system termed “doubly uniparental inheritance” (DUI; for reviews see Breton, Doucet‐Beaupré, Stewart, Hoeh, & Blier, ; Passamonti & Ghiselli, ; Zouros, ). To date, the vast majority of species with DUI that have been reported belong to the Mytiloida, Nuculanoida, Unionoida, and Veneroida (Gusman, Lecomte, Stewart, Passamonti, & Breton, ), including species of the genus Donax (Fernández‐Pérez, Froufe, Nantón, Gaspar, & Méndez, ; Theologidis, Fodelianakis, Gaspar, & Zouros, ), such as D. trunculus . In species with DUI, two types of mtDNA exist: one that is transmitted through the eggs to both female and male offspring (the maternal or F‐type genome) and another that is transmitted through the sperm only to male offspring (the paternal or M‐type genome).…”

“…In this study, two mitochondrial genes, 16S rDNA (16S) and cytochrome b (Cytb), that have been extensively employed in previous population genetic studies of marine organisms were used (Baharum & Nurdalila, ; Chiu, Bor, Tan, Lin, & Jean, ; Fernández‐Pérez et al, ; Lim, Ahmad, Nuruddin, & Mohd‐Nor, ; Maggi & González‐Wangüemert, ; Martínez et al, ; Shen et al, ). The use of different regions of DNA, which might be differently affected by evolutionary forces, provides a more complete picture of the current and past processes that influence the patterns of genetic variation and offers valuable data for the management of species.…”