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Asymmetric genetic exchange in the brown seaweed Sargassum fusiforme (Phaeophyceae) driven by oceanic currents

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Abstract

Geological phenomena (e.g. drastic sea level fluctuations during the Quaternary Ice Age in the Northern Hemisphere) have been demonstrated to intensively affect the biogeographic patterns and tempo-spatial compositions of genetic diversity of marine organisms. However, it is poorly understood whether contemporary factors such as oceanic surface currents have also shaped inter-regional population genetics of specific coastal marine flora, with or without limited dispersal capability. In this study, we determined mtDNA Cox1 gene sequences of the brown seaweed Sargassum fusiforme from nine populations along the Chinese coast and one population from the west coast of South Korea, in an effort to understand what factors are contributing to their current genetic structure and geographic distribution patterns. Genetic analyses indicated a deep genetic break between the Yellow-Bohai Sea (YBS) and the other two marginal seas, the East China Sea (ECS) and the South China Sea (SCS). In particular, the amount of genetic exchange from the SCS to each of the ECS and YBS was significantly higher than that from the opposite directions. Our analyses supports the hypothesis that biogeographic patterns of genetic variation in S. fusiforme are probably an interactive consequence of post-glacial colonization from two scattered refugia driven by the offshore Kuroshio Current and asymmetric gene flow among adjacent sea margins.

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Acknowledgments

We thank engineer Ji-Dong Liu for his kind help on field collection. We are grateful to Michael Scott DePriest (The University of Alabama) for assistance to improve the English-writing and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments on the original version of this manuscript. This study was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31000103) granted to Z.M. Hu and the US National Science Foundation Assembling the Tree of Life Program (No. DEB-1036495) granted to JMLB.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Zi-Min Hu, Jie Zhang & De-Lin Duan

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA

    Zi-Min Hu & Juan Lopez-Bautista

  3. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jie Zhang

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  1. Zi-Min Hu
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Correspondence to Zi-Min Hu.

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Communicated by S. Uthicke.

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Supplementary material 1 (DOC 39 kb)

227_2013_2192_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Fig. S1 Plots of isolation by distance (IBD) analysis, a reduced major axis regression to calculate interpret and slope of genetic and geographic distance (Km). (Z = 21227.581, R2 = 0.174, r = 0.4175, one-sided P = 0.9580) (PDF 9 kb)

227_2013_2192_MOESM3_ESM.tif

Fig. S2 Posterior probability of effective population size (θ) for each of the three marginal-scale populations (TIFF 1252 kb)

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Hu, ZM., Zhang, J., Lopez-Bautista, J. et al. Asymmetric genetic exchange in the brown seaweed Sargassum fusiforme (Phaeophyceae) driven by oceanic currents. Mar Biol 160, 1407–1414 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-013-2192-x

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