Phylogeography Study of Ammodytes personatus in Northwestern Pacific: Pleistocene Isolation, Temperature and Current Conducted Secondary Contact

Abstract

To assess the role of historical process and contemporary factors in shaping population structures in Northwestern Pacific, mitochondrial control region sequences were analyzed to characterize the phylogeography and population structure of the Japanese sand lance Ammodytes personatus. A total of 429 individuals sampled from 17 populations through the species' range are sequenced. Two distinct lineages are detected, which might have been divergent in the Sea of Japan and Pacific costal waters of Japanese Island, during the low sea level. Significant genetic structure is revealed between the Kuroshio and Oyashio Currents. However, significant genetic structure is also detected in the Sea of Japan, contracting expected homogenization hypothesis in Tsushima Current. The haplotype frequency of lineages in both sides of Japanese Island and significant genetic structure between north and south groups revealed that the distribution of lineage B and north group were highly limited by the annual sea temperature. The lack of lineage B in Qingdao population with low sea temperature reflects the sea temperature barrier. Lack of genetic structure in the south group and north group populations indicated that ocean currents within groups facilitated the dispersal of A. personatus.

Systematics of North Pacific sand lances of the genus Ammodytes based on molecular and morphological evidence, with the description of a new species from Japan

“…1). Data of Okamoto (1989), Kim et al (2006Kim et al ( , 2008Kim et al ( , 2010, Han et al (2012), and published sequences in GenBank indicate that A. japonicus also ranges to Kyushu, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Pacific Ocean side of northern Japan, where its range overlaps with that of the new species (Table 4).…”

“…Through comparisons between our sequence data and data in GenBank and BOLD, we identified 2 individuals of A. heian n. sp. from the Sea of Japan in the material of Kim et al (2006Kim et al ( , 2008Kim et al ( , 2010 Han et al (2012) found 2 lineages around Japan and in the Yellow Sea on the basis of analysis of the mitochondrial control region, concluding that further study with nuclear DNA markers is needed to clarify their taxonomic status. However, the morphological and COI sequence differences disclosed here as well as the isozyme analysis of Hashimoto and Kawasaki (1981) strongly support the conclusion that the lineages represent 2 species.…”

“…Species of Ammodytes are cornerstone prey items for more than 100 species of marine mammals, birds, and other fishes in the region of the North Pacific Ocean (Field, 1988;Willson et al 1 ). Despite their tremendous importance in ecosystems and as targets in fisheries off Japan (Hamada, 1985;Han et al, 2012) and in the North Sea (Sherman et al, 1981;Furness, 2002), little is known about their distribution or life history.…”

“…In recent studies where the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region and 16s ribosomal RNA (rRNA) were examined (Kim et al, 2006) and where mtDNA cytochrome oxidase c subunit 1 (COI) was used to identify larvae, Kim et al (2006Kim et al ( , 2008Kim et al ( , 2010 proposed that at least 2 species of sand lances were present in material from around Korea and Japan. Han et al (2012) examined the population structure of Ammodytes in waters off Japan and determined that 2 lineages resulted from the past isolation of the Sea of Japan from neighboring seas-a separation that was facilitated by current flows and temperature barriers. Mecklenburg et al (2011) used evidence from COI to suggest that 2 species were among specimens collected in Alaska: 1 species (A. hexapterus) in the Bering and Chukchi seas and 1 species in the Gulf of Alaska ("likely ...…”

Contrasting genetic population structures between congeneric flounder species, Hippoglossoides dubius and H. pinetorum

“…The existence of genetically distinct groups has also been reported for some shallow-water marine fish species in the northwestern Pacific: Chelon haematocheilus (Liu et al 2007), Ammodytes personatus (Han et al 2012), and Chaenogobius annularis (Hirase et al 2012). This demonstrates that isolation in the deep-sea basin is not the unique cause of genetic breaks among marine fish species in this area.…”