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Tropical fishes in a temperate sea: evolution of the wrasse Thalassoma pavo and the parrotfish Sparisoma cretense in the Mediterranean and the adjacent Macaronesian and Cape Verde Archipelagos

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Abstract

The northeastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea share geological histories and display great faunal affinities. The majority of the Mediterranean species have Atlantic origins, with a few species with tropical affinities. These include the parrotfish Sparisoma cretense and the wrasse Thalassoma pavo that are restricted to the subtropical northeastern Atlantic, the Macaronesian archipelagos (Azores, Madeira, and Canaries) and the southern Mediterranean. The Pleistocene glaciations have been described as having different effects on the fauna of the two regions. During glacial peaks, Mediterranean waters remained warmer than those of the adjacent Atlantic. Within the eastern Atlantic, the effects of Pleistocene glaciations were differentiated. Here, we perform a comparative analysis focusing on T. pavo and S. cretense populations from the northeastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean to assess the effects of Pleistocene glaciations in these two species. Sequences from the mitochondrial control region were obtained and analyzed combining phylogeographic and demographic approaches. Gene flow between Atlantic and Mediterranean populations was shown to be very high. The Mediterranean populations of T. pavo and S. cretense showed high levels of genetic diversity, even in the eastern basin, pointing to an ancient colonization event. This suggests that both species must have been able to persist in the Mediterranean during the cold Pleistocene periods. Historical migration estimates revealed a Mediterranean towards Atlantic trend in the case of T. pavo, which may reflect the re-colonization of areas in the Atlantic by fish that survived the cold phases in relatively warmer Mediterranean refugia. Our data also showed that within the Macaronesian Archipelagos, migrations occurred from Madeira towards the Azores, for both T. pavo and S. cretense, thus supporting a post-glacial colonization of the Azores by fish that persisted in the warmer region of Madeira. Similar geographic distributions, thermal affinities, and means of dispersion for T. pavo and S. cretense resulted in a similar response to the effects of Pleistocene glaciations, as evidenced by identical phylogeographic patterns.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to R. Araújo from Estação Marítima do Funchal for providing samples from Madeira. We thank M. Ramon for help in the lab and N. Serpa for sampling in the Azores. Vera S. Domingues has a doctoral fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (SFRH/BD/13069/2003). Research at ISPA-UIE (UI&D #331/94) and IMAR-DOP/UAz (UI&D #531 and LA#9) are funded by FCT through pluri-annual and programmatic funding schemes (FEDER). IMAR-DOP/UAz research is also granted by DRCT. This paper is also a contribution to MarBEF (Network of Excellence: “Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning”—contract number GOCE-CT-2003–505446).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Unidade de Investigação em Eco-Etologia, R. Jardim do Tabaco 34, 1149-041, Lisbon, Portugal

    Vera S. Domingues & Vitor C. Almada

  2. Departamento de Oceanografia e Pescas, Universidade dos Açores, 9901-862, Horta, Azores, Portugal

    Vera S. Domingues & Ricardo S. Santos

  3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Long Marine Lab, University of California Santa Cruz, 100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, USA

    Vera S. Domingues, Markos Alexandrou & Giacomo Bernardi

  4. Department of Biological and Chemical Sciences, University of London, Queen Mary, Mile End Road E1 4NS, London, UK

    Markos Alexandrou

  5. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Republic of Panama

    D. Ross Robertson

  6. Dpto. Biología Animal (Ciencias Marinas), Universidad de La Laguna, Avenida Astrofísico Francisco Sánchez s/n, 38206, La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

    Alberto Brito

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  1. Vera S. Domingues
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Correspondence to Vera S. Domingues.

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Communicated by J.-M. Gili.

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Domingues, V.S., Alexandrou, M., Almada, V.C. et al. Tropical fishes in a temperate sea: evolution of the wrasse Thalassoma pavo and the parrotfish Sparisoma cretense in the Mediterranean and the adjacent Macaronesian and Cape Verde Archipelagos. Mar Biol 154, 465–474 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-008-0941-z

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