Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Meeting of Waters, a possible shelter of evolutionary significant units for Amazonian fish

Conservation Genetics volume 14, pages 1185–1192 (2013)Cite this article

Abstract

Identification of priority conservation areas is crucial for safeguarding freshwater ecosystems. Occurrence of unique populations and/or evolutionary significant units for key species is one of the most frequent reasons for protecting a region or location. In this study we have studied two of the most important fisheries resources of the Amazon basin, Curimata and Tambaqui, from different areas, in order to identify common zones of special diversity. Employing the Barcoding cytochrome oxidase I gene as a genetic tool, we have detected a clear differentiation of the populations inhabiting the Meeting of Waters and the rest of the basin for both species. This area corresponds to the confluence of the Solimões and the Negro rivers, of different physicochemical water characteristics, at the Brazilian city of Manaus in central Amazonas. The Meeting of Waters area (near Manaus) could be recommended as a potential area subject of special management, given its apparent role as a shelter for evolutionary significant units.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

References

  • Albert JS, Crampton WG (2010) The geography and ecology of diversification in neotropical freshwaters. Nat Educ Knowl 1(10):13

    Google Scholar 

  • Albert JS, Reis RE (2011) Historical biogeography of neotropical freshwater fishes. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (in press)

  • Araújo-Lima CARM, Ruffino ML (2004) Migratory fishes of the Brazilian Amazon. In: Carolsfield, J, Harvey B, Ross C and Baer A (eds) Migratory fishes of South America. biology, fisheries, and conservation status. Co-published by World Fisheries Trust/World Bank/IDRC, Victoria, pp 233–302

  • Bandelt HJ, Forster P, Röhl A (1999) Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies. Mol Biol Evol 16:37–48

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Barson NJ, Cable J, Van Oosterhout C (2009) Population genetic analysis of microsatellite variation of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in Trinidad and Tobago: evidence for a dynamic source-sink metapopulation structure, founder events and population bottlenecks. J Evol Biol 22(3):485–497

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Batista V, Petrere Junior M (2007) Spatial and temporal distribution of fishing resources exploited by the Manaus fishing fleet, Amazonas, Brazil. Braz J Biol 67:651–656

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Beerli P, Palczewski M (2010) Unified framework to evaluate panmixia and migration direction among multiple sampling locations. Genetics 185:313–326

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Colonnello G (1991) Observaciones fenológicas y producción de hojarasca en un bosque inundable (Várzea) del Río Orinoco. Interciencia 16:202–208

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorea JG (2003) Fish are central in the diet of Amazonian riparians: should we worry about their mercury concentrations? Environ Res 92:232–244

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Estoup A, Largiader CR, Perrot E, Chourrout D (1996) Rapid one-tube DNA extraction for reliable PCR detection of fish polymorphic markers and transgenes. Mol Mar Biol Biotech 5:295–298

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Excoffier L, Laval G, Schneider S (2005) Arlequin (version 3.0): an integrated software package for population genetics data analysis. Evol Bioinform Online 1:47–50

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Farias IP, Torrico JP, Garcia-Davila C, Santos MCF, Hrbek T, Renno J-F (2010) Are rapids a barrier for floodplain fishes of the Amazon Basin? A demographic study of the keystone floodplain species Colossoma macropomum (Teleostei: Characiformes). Mol Phyl Evol 56:1129–1135

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fu Y-X (1997) Statistical tests of neutrality of mutations against population growth, hitchhiking and background selection. Genetics 147:915–925

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Gram S, Kvist LP, Caseres A (2001) The economic importance of products extracted from amazonian flood plain forests. Ambio 30:365–368

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hall TA (1999) BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nucleic Acids Sympos Ser 41:95–98

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hänfling B, Weetman D (2006) Concordant genetic estimators of migration reveal anthropogenically enhanced source-sink population structure in the river sculpin. Cottus gobio. Genetics 173(3):1487–1501

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harpending H (1994) Signature of ancient population growth in a low-resolution mitochondrial DNA mismatch distribution. Hum Biol 66:591–600

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Horreo JL (2012) “Representative genes”, is it OK the use a small amount of data to obtain a phylogeny that is at least close to the true tree? J Evol Biol. doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02622.x

    Google Scholar 

  • Horreo JL, Martinez JL, Ayllon F, Pola IG, Monteoliva JA, Héland M, Garcia-Vazquez E (2011) Impact of habitat fragmentation on the genetics of populations in dendritic landscapes. Fresh Biol 56:2567–2579

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hrbek T, Crossa M, Farias IP (2007) Conservation strategies for Arapaima gigas (Schinz, 1822) and the Amazonian várzea ecosystem. Braz J Biol 67(4):909–917

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hughes JM, Schmidt DJ, Finn DS (2009) Genes instreams: using DNA to understand the movement of freshwater fauna and their riverine habitat. Bioscience 59(7):573–583

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kinlan BP, Gaines DD (2003) Propagule dispersal in marine and terrestrial communities: a community perspective. Ecol 84:2007–2020

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manni F, Guerard E, Heyer E (2004) Geographic patterns of (genetic, morphologic, linguistic) variation: how barriers can be detected by using Monmonier’s algorithm. Hum Biol 76(2):173–190

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Martin AR, Da Silva VMF, Salmon DL (2004) Riverine habitat preferences of botos (Inia geoffrensis) and tucuxis (Sotalia fluviatilis) in the Central Amazon. Mar Mamm Sci 20(2):189–200

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mills LS, Allendorf FW (1996) The one-migrant-per-generation rule in conservation and management. Conserv Biol 10(6):1509–1518

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monmonier M (1973) Maximum-difference barriers: an alternative numerical regionalization method. Geog Anal 3:245–261

    Google Scholar 

  • Moritz C (1994) Defining “evolutionary significant units” for conservation. Trends Ecol Evol 9(10):373–375

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Palsbøll PJ, Bérubé M, Allendorf FW (2007) Identification of management units using population genetic data. Trends Ecol Evol 22(1):11–16

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Quintero-Pinto LG (2003) Especies ícticas amazónicas promisorias para la acuicultura nacional En: Colombia Evento: IV Seminario Internacional de Acuicultura y I congreso de investigaciones acuícolas

  • Ramos-Onsins SE, Rozas J (2002) Statistical properties of new neutrality tests against population growth. Mol Biol Evol 19:2092–2100

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Reeves GH, Benda LE, Burnett KM, Bisson PA, Sedell JR (1995) A disturbance-based ecosystem approach to maintaining and restoring freshwater habitat of evolutionary significant units of anadromous salmonids in the Pacific Northwest. Am Fish S S 17:334–349

    Google Scholar 

  • Santos MCF, Ruffino ML, Farias IP (2007) High levels of genetic variability and panmixia of the tambaqui, Colossoma macropomum (Cuvier, 1816) in the main channel of the Amazon River. J Fish Biol 71:33–44

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt GW (1976) Primary production of phytoplankton in three types of Amazonian waters. IV. On the primary productivity of phytoplankton in a bay of the lower Rio Negro (Amazonas, Brazil). Amazoniana 5:517–528

    Google Scholar 

  • Silva EA, Sterwart DJ (2006) Age structure, growth and survival rates of the commercial fish Prochilodus nigricans (bocachico) in North-eastern Ecuador. Environ Biol Fish 77:63–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sivasundar A, Bermingham E, Orti G (2008) Population structure and biogeography of migratory freshwater fishes (Prochilodus: characiformes) in major South American rivers. Mol Ecol 10:407–417

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tajima F (1989) The effect of change in population size on DNA polymorphism. Genetics 123(3):597–601

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson JD, Higgins DG, Gibson TJ (1994) Clustal-W, improving the sensitive of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucl Acid Res 22:4673–4680

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tufto J, Hindar K (2003) Effective size in management and conservation of subdivided populations. J Theor Biol 222(3):273–281

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Waples RS (1995) Evolutionarily significant units and the conservation of biological diversity under the endangered species act. Am Fish Soc Symp 17:8–27

    Google Scholar 

  • Ward RD, Zemlak TS, Innes BH, Last PD, Hebert PDN (2005) DNA Barcoding Australia’s fish species. Proc Roy Soc B Biol 360:1847–1857

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ziburski A (1990) Ausbreitungs-und Reproduktionsbiologie einiger Baumarten der amazoniaschen Uberschwemmungs-walder. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Hamburg, Hamburg. 112 pp

Download references

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Ivan G. Pola for help with laboratory tasks, and to Angel Rosales, Ione Ginuino, Gema Adan and Eduardo del Rosal for collaborating in sampling. Alba Ardura was economically supported by the Spanish National Project CGL2009-08279. This study was carried out in the context of the Brazilian-Spanish cooperation project AECID D-023814-09.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biologia Funcional, Universidad de Oviedo, C/Julian Claveria s/n, 33006, Oviedo, Spain

    Alba Ardura, Jose L. Horreo & Eva Garcia-Vazquez

  2. Laboratorio de Toxicologia, Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública, Fundaçao Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Vanessa Gomes, Ana R. Linde & Josino C. Moreira

Authors
  1. Alba Ardura
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vanessa Gomes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ana R. Linde
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Josino C. Moreira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Jose L. Horreo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Eva Garcia-Vazquez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alba Ardura.

Additional information

Alba Ardura and Vanessa Gomes contributed equally to this study.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ardura, A., Gomes, V., Linde, A.R. et al. The Meeting of Waters, a possible shelter of evolutionary significant units for Amazonian fish. Conserv Genet 14, 1185–1192 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-013-0505-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-013-0505-8

Keywords

search

Navigation