Molecular phylogeny of European and African Barbus and their West Asian relatives in the Cyprininae (Teleostei: Cypriniformes) and orogenesis of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

The phylogenetic relationships of European and African Barbus and their West Asian relatives in Cyprininae remain largely unresolved. Consequently, little is known about the drivers of their evolution, including the possible association of uplifting of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) with the early divergence of the subfamily. We use complete sequence data of the mitochondrial DNA gene encoding the protein cytochrome b (Cytb) to hypothesize the phylogeny of 85 species belonging to 47 genera in the Cyprininae plus 6 species from the Leuciscinae. We employ 6 other species from Cypriniformes as outgroup taxa and estimate divergence times. Our results indicate that European Barbus sensu stricto lineage including Aulopyge shares a common ancestor with specialized and highly specialized schizothoracins and the genera Cyprinion and Scaphiodonichtys. The common ancestor appears to have originated in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) region about 19.4-17.8 Ma. Barbus sensu stricto lineage appears to have originated about 16.6-15.5 Ma. Small to medium sized African Barbus sensu lato appear to have had an Oriental origin about 19.1-15.3 Ma and are closely related to Asian Puntius. West Asian Carasobarbus lineage including large African Barbus sensu lato might have originated about 9.94 Ma, also in Oriental Realm and has a close relationship to Asian Neolissochilus and Tor. The large-sized Barbus sensu lato appear to have diverged from Carasobarbus about 7.7 Ma. Finally, the Cyprininae appear to have radiated rapidly into nine lineages and many sublineages from about 27.8 to 17.8 Ma, close to the time of the second-stage tectonic movements of the QTP. Our analyses provide evidence that the uplifting of the QTP drove early diversification of the Cyprininae. Our extensive sampling of species involving all of the important areas results in clear evolutionary scenario for the Cyprininae.

The complete mitogenome of the Moroccan Luciobarbus rifensis Doadrio, Casal-López & Yahyaoui, 2015 (Actinopterygii: Cyprinidae)

“…The size of the tRNA genes in mitogenome is 67-77bp. The phylogenetic relationships for the species (Figure 1) were consistent with those obtained for Cyprinidae (Wang et al 2012;Wang et al 2013) differing in some low supported relationship (e.g. for Gymnocypris namensis, Scaphiodonichthys acanthopterus, and Procypris rabaudi).…”

Phylogenetic Relationships of Five Asian Schilbid Genera Including Clupisoma (Siluriformes: Schilbeidae)

“…(2010) [ 34 ], Telford and Copley (2011) [ 27 ] and Wang et al . [ 35 ] emphasized the importance of increasing the density of ingroup sampling. The present study provides support for this approach.…”

A new species of Enteromius (Actinopterygii, Cyprinidae, Smiliogastrinae) from the Awash River, Ethiopia, and the re-establishment of E. akakianus

“…In previous taxonomic studies, small-sized African smiliogastrin barbs were commonly referred to as a polyphyletic assemblage named Barbus sensu lato (e.g., Greenwood 1962;Berrebi et al 1996;Golubtsov and Berendzen 2005;Mina et al 2017). Recent molecular phylogenetic studies of barbeled cypriniforms supported a different opinion (e.g., Karaman 1971;Roberts 2010) that the assemblage of Palearctic true barbs -Barbus Daudin, 1805, typified by the species Cyprinus barbus Linnaeus, 1758 and close genera -do not occur in sub-Saharan Africa (Tsigenopoulos and Berrebi 2000;Wang et al 2013;Yang et al 2015;Ren and Mayden 2016). Though the phylogenetic resolution was considered by some authors as rather limited (Schmidt and Bart 2015;Stiassny and Sakharova 2016), all available genetic data clearly indicate that diploid African taxa belong to a phylogenetically distinct clade, the tribe Smiliogastrini or the subfamily Smiliogastrinae of the family Cyprinidae (in case the subfamily Cyprininae is given the family rank) and are not closely related to Barbus sensu stricto (Yang et al 2015;Ren and Mayden 2016).…”