Genetic population structure in the swimming crab,Portunus trituberculatusand its implications for fishery management

Abstract

Information on the genetic population structure of economic species is important for understanding their evolutionary processes and for management programmes. In this study, the genetic structure of 12 P. trituberculatus populations along the China seas and Japan was analysed. A fragment of mitochondrial control region was sequenced as a genetic marker in swimming crabs sampled from the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea and Japan, with dense sampling in the Bohai Sea. These populations showed an intermediate and significant genetic population structure, with an overall Φst value of 0.054 (P < 0.01). Based on a hierarchical AMOVA, they could be divided into two groups, the South China Sea population and all the other populations. The distribution of the haplotypes and the pairwise Φst values between populations indicated a high level of gene flow among most populations in the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and Japan. However, low but significant genetic differentiation (P < 0.05) was also detected among several populations in these areas. Many details of the genetic structure were revealed, especially for the populations in the semi-enclosed Bohai Sea, and the inconsistency with previous studies was discussed. The structure patterns indicate that sea-level changes during the glacial period of the Pleistocene and oceanographic factors are important in shaping the genetic population structure of swimming crabs. Finally, the implications for fishery are suggested. Fig. 2. Minimum spanning trees constructed from CR. The sizes of the circles are proportional to haplotype frequencies. Lines between circles each represent one mutational step. The hashmarks and numbers indicate additional mutational steps. The population origins of haplotypes are indicated by colours.

Population genetic structure of macrozoobenthic invertebrates: Its implications for coastal resource management

“…However, in the case of swimming crab Portunus trituberculatus, large population size may contribute to preserving high levels of genetic diversity. High population genetic diversity was observed in all populations of swimming crabs collected along the China seas and Japan [38]. High genetic diversity was also reported in a subdivided population of tropical blacklip rock oyster Saccostrea echinata in northern Australia.…”

Population genetic structure of blue swimming crab (Portunus pelagicus) in the Gulf of Thailand

“…Comparing with those of other crabs, the nucleotide diversity in the mtDNA CR of the P. pelagicus in the Gulf of Thailand was low. For example, the nucleotide diversity of the P. trituberculatus was 0.020 (Guo et al 2011) and 0.025 (Hui et al 2019), C. guanhumi was 0.027 (Amaral et al 2015), and E. mederi was 0.023 (Supmee et al 2012b). A high value of haplotype diversity but a low level of nucleotide diversity was presented within the P. pelagicus population in the Gulf of Thailand.…”

Development of Microsatellite Markers Based on Transcriptome Sequencing and Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Swimming Crab (Portunus trituberculatus)

“…Due to its high nutritional value and rapid growth, P. trituberculatus has become one of the most important economic crab species in marine aquaculture ( Lv et al, 2017 ). Indeed, P. trituberculatus is one of the most heavily fished brachyurans in the world with approximately 95% of the total catch occurring in China ( Liu et al, 2013 ; Hui et al, 2018 ). The total catch was 424,630 tons in 2020 ( Bureau of Fisheries of Ministry of Agriculture, PRC, 2021 ).…”

“…Benefitting from the rapid advance of high-throughput sequencing and genotyping technologies, an increasing number of molecular markers are developed and applied to genetic analyses in aquatic species. To date, molecular markers including isozyme ( Fan et al, 2009 ), random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) ( Chi et al, 2010 ), amplified fragments length polymorphism (AFLP) ( Liu et al, 2013 ; Liu et al, 2014 ), mitochondrial DNA ( Guo et al, 2012 ; Shan et al, 2017 ; Hui et al, 2018 ), microsatellites DNA ( Lee et al, 2013 ; Yue et al, 2022 ), and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) ( Duan et al, 2022a ) were developed and used in population genetic analysis of P. trituberculatus . Among these markers, microsatellite DNA markers (simple sequence repeats, SSRs) have become an ideal molecular marker in population genetics research because of their co-dominant inheritance, high polymorphism, reproducibility, hyper-variable, transferability, random distribution in the genome, and ease of analysis via PCR ( Gou et al, 2020 ; Pavan Kumara et al, 2020 ; Zhu et al, 2021 ; Lu et al, 2022 ).…”